Philadelphia leaders look into expanding crime-fighting technology with ShotSpotter
The short version: 6abc reports Philadelphia officials are eyeing an expansion of ShotSpotter gunshot-detection tech, another sign that surveillance budgets grow faster than proof they work.
Our Take
Credit to 6abc Philadelphia for flagging this before the ink's dry on any contract. ShotSpotter (now rebranded as SoundThinking) has a long history of overpromising: cities from Chicago to San Antonio have quietly dropped it after audits found high false-positive rates and little measurable drop in gun violence. Philadelphia leaders "looking into" expansion should mean independent, public data review first — not a rubber stamp because a vendor demo sounded good in a council meeting.
This matters beyond microphones on poles. Acoustic sensors, ALPR cameras, and facial recognition all get sold the same way — as a narrow tool for violent crime — and then quietly widen into general-purpose surveillance infrastructure with almost no public oversight of how the data is stored, shared, or matched against other systems like Flock's license plate network. Once city officials get comfortable expanding one surveillance category, expanding the next one gets easier, especially when the vendor pitch decks look identical.
If you're in Philly or anywhere else watching this playbook unfold, check our camera map to see what's already watching your block, and use our take-action guide to push your council for transparency before they sign the next surveillance check.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 6abc Philadelphia, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.