Who is using ShotSpotter technology in North Texas?
The short version: CBS Texas found DeSoto is the only city among 33 surveyed North Texas departments still running ShotSpotter, raising questions about the tech's real value and spread.
Our Take
Credit to CBS Texas for doing the legwork here — reaching out to 33 different police departments is the kind of basic accountability journalism that should happen more often when it comes to surveillance tech. The finding itself is telling: after years of hype about gunshot-detection microphones dotting city skylines, only DeSoto is still in the game. That's not a coincidence. Cities from Chicago to San Antonio have quietly walked away from ShotSpotter after audits questioned its accuracy, its cost, and whether it actually helps solve crimes or just sends cops chasing false alarms into neighborhoods that are already over-policed.
We bring this up because ShotSpotter is part of the same surveillance logic that built the ALPR network we track every day. It's sold as a narrow public-safety tool, installed with little public debate, and then quietly normalized until removing it looks like 'soft on crime.' Meanwhile the actual evidence on effectiveness stays thin. Flock cameras get pitched the exact same way — as a discrete crime-fighting add-on — right up until a city realizes it's built a comprehensive tracking grid on every driver, not just the ones committing gunfire.
If DeSoto is an outlier now, that's worth watching, not shrugging off — vendors don't stop pitching just because 32 other departments said no. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and if your city is weighing a new surveillance contract, our take-action page has tools to push back before it becomes permanent infrastructure.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS TEXAS, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.