By Ralph Clark
I have written in these pages three times now about gunshot detection technology and the role it plays in protecting communities that experience the highest rates of gun violence in Chicago. I have compared the technology to smoke alarms and to AEDs (heart defibrillators found in airports and other public places) — pieces of safety infrastructure that do not prevent harm itself but make survival possible when harm occurs. I have argued that we cannot afford to treat gun violence in Black and Brown neighborhoods as if the structural drivers of violence and the need for rapid response are competing concerns. They are not. We need community violence intervention, trauma-informed care, and economic opportunity.
We also need first responders to know when shots have been fired on our blocks, so they can arrive in time to save lives.
I have made these arguments because I believe them, and because the company I have led for fifteen years has built and deployed gunshot detection technology in cities across the country (and beyond) with the goal of helping first responders find gunshot victims faster — particularly in neighborhoods where gunfire too often goes unreported to 911.
I have conveyed these merits in a venue I respect because I believe the Defender’s readers are the people most directly affected by the decisions that have been made on this issue, and your voices should be at the center of the conversation, rather than the periphery.
This week, I want to share what new polling – conducted by an independent polling firm called Change Research (and commissioned by SoundThinking, the company that created ShotSpotter) – has documented about where the communities most affected by gun violence stand on these questions. I’ll also share what I think these results seem to be asking of those of us who care about these communities being heard.
What The Polling Documents
Polling conducted in Chicago between April 22 and April 28 of this year found that 80 percent of Black voters and 78 percent of Hispanic voters in Chicago support the use of gunshot detection technology in their neighborhoods. In the Far Southeast Side, support reaches 88 percent — the highest level of support measured anywhere in the city. The strongest support, in every demographic crosstab in the poll, comes from the communities most directly affected by gun violence. The most skeptical voices come from neighborhoods that do not hear gunfire regularly. The data suggests that the closer voters live to gun violence, the more strongly they want the tools that help first responders save lives.
These numbers should not surprise anyone who has actually listened to the communities I have written about in these pages. They confirm what residents in the most-affected neighborhoods have been saying for years to journalists, to community organizations, to elected officials, and to anyone else who would listen. The poll does not document new opinion. It documents what was already true and what has been said clearly, repeatedly, and without ambiguity, despite some audiences refusing to hear it.
What Is Notable Is the Contrast
The findings stand in sharp contrast to the political conversation that has been conducted about these communities. We have a public conversation, in Chicago and in cities like it, in which officials at podiums tell us that violence is receding citywide. The aggregate numbers in some neighborhoods have improved. The trends in others have not. The narrative that violence is fading is not, for many of the families I have spent fifteen years thinking about, the reality of what is happening on their blocks right now.
What I Am Not Saying
I want to be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying gunshot detection technology by itself will solve the conditions that produce gun violence in Black and Brown neighborhoods. I have argued in the Defender that no single tool or technology can do that work. Gun violence is rooted in many factors – disinvestment, segregation, education, and inequity, among others. Addressing it requires community violence intervention, trauma-informed care, economic opportunity, and the broader structural changes that our neighborhoods have needed for generations.
But I am also not willing to accept the false choice that has been offered to us — the choice between addressing structural inequity and protecting the lives of the people currently living within the structures we have not yet changed.
We can and must do both.
And the affected communities, when given a voice in their own future, have said clearly that they want both. The polling documents what residents have been saying. It is now on the rest of us to hear them.
The Call
Our communities know what they are living through. The data now confirms it in numbers that the political class cannot ignore. The communities affected by gun violence have spoken. The question is whether their elected officials are listening, and whether the rest of us are going to make sure they hear.
Any technology system that gets responders to gunfire faster is better than the silence residents are living with now. Sixty-one percent of Chicago voters indicated that closing the gunfire silence gap remains unfilled. It’s time to hear those voices and close that gap. Precious lives depend on it.
Ralph Clark is President and CEO of SoundThinking, Inc.
The opinions expressed in this column are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chicago Defender.
