Chicago aldermen challenge mayor's plan to phase out ShotSpotter

Our Take

FOX 32 Chicago's report captures something we see over and over in the surveillance beat: once a monitoring system gets bolted onto a police department, ripping it out becomes a political knife fight, no matter how shaky the underlying tech is. ShotSpotter has been dogged for years by independent audits questioning its accuracy and reports showing its microphones are disproportionately clustered in Black and Latino neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. That's the exact pattern we track with Flock's ALPR network — expensive, opaque systems marketed as public-safety silver bullets, deployed unevenly, and defended fiercely by whoever benefits politically once they're installed.

What's notable here isn't just the technology, it's the process. Aldermen pushing back on the mayor's phase-out timeline aren't necessarily defending ShotSpotter's effectiveness — they're defending the appearance of 'doing something,' which is often how these contracts survive long after the evidence turns sour. Flock cameras get the same treatment in city council chambers nationwide: renewed on autopilot, rarely audited, rarely removed even when communities raise real concerns about cost, accuracy, or who's actually being watched.

If Chicago's ShotSpotter fight looks familiar, that's because it's the same playbook driving ALPR expansion everywhere. Check our map to see whether Flock cameras are already logging plates in your neighborhood, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back before your city council has this same fight over cameras instead of microphones.