CHICAGO DETOX | THE FUTURE OF SHOT SPOTTER | DO YOU THINK IT IS A GOOD INVESTMENT OR NAH??
The short version: Chicago Detox reopens the ShotSpotter debate, and it's a reminder that every 'good investment' surveillance pitch deserves the same cost-benefit scrutiny we apply to Flock ALPRs.
Our Take
Chicago Detox digs into ShotSpotter the way more cities should be digging into Flock: not as a settled question of 'safety vs. nothing,' but as a real procurement decision with real tradeoffs. Credit to the channel for pulling in law enforcement, city officials, and residents instead of just taking a vendor's word for it — that's the exact conversation that gets skipped when a police department signs a Flock contract on a council consent agenda with zero public hearing.
The parallels matter. Both ShotSpotter and Flock were sold to city councils as narrow, technical tools — one detects gunfire, the other reads plates — and both quietly became sprawling surveillance infrastructure with murky effectiveness data and even murkier oversight. Chicago is at least having the 'is this worth the money' fight in public. Most towns running Flock haven't had that fight at all; the cameras just went up.
If your city is weighing a surveillance contract, don't let it happen without scrutiny. Check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to push for the same public debate Chicago is having about ShotSpotter.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Chicago Detox, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.