What is the best way to deploy gunshot detection?

Our Take

Credit where it's due: Flock's Jamie and Dalton at least acknowledge up front that gunshot detection is controversial, pointing to the well-documented debates over false positives, over-policing of flagged neighborhoods, and whether audio sensors actually improve outcomes. But this is still a vendor talking to its own customers about how to "integrate" more of its own tech stack, not an independent evaluation. When a company frames its own hardware as part of a "holistic plan," the goal is adoption, not accountability.

Audio detection sits in the same surveillance ecosystem as license plate readers: it's sold as a narrow public-safety tool, but once the microphones and cameras are networked together, you get a much broader sensor grid feeding data into dispatch and investigations with little public oversight of accuracy rates, false-alert rates, or racial disparities in where the sensors get placed. "Vetting your technology," as the video puts it, should mean public vetting — city council hearings, audits, and contracts residents can actually read — not just internal product-fit discussions between a company and its police customers.

If your town is weighing a gunshot-detection or Flock contract, don't just take the sales pitch at face value. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action guide to push for transparency before city hall signs another check.