PPB oversight group likely to recommend ShotSpotter to curb gun violence
The short version: A Portland police oversight group is reportedly leaning toward recommending ShotSpotter, adding another always-on listening network to a city already expanding automated surveillance.
Our Take
Credit to KOIN 6 for flagging this before it's a done deal. ShotSpotter isn't an ALPR, but it comes from the same playbook: install a dense sensor network across neighborhoods, promise it'll only target gunfire, and let the data pile up with little public visibility into how it's actually used or how accurate it really is. Cities that adopted it have had to deal with high false-positive rates, murky vendor contracts, and questions about which neighborhoods get blanketed with microphones in the first place — usually not the wealthy ones.
The bigger story here is the pattern, not just the product. Once a city says yes to one always-on sensor network to fight crime, it gets a lot easier to say yes to the next one — license plate readers, facial recognition, predictive policing dashboards. Portland already has Flock cameras creeping into the conversation, and an oversight body normalizing 'more surveillance tech, less debate' as the default answer to gun violence sets a precedent that outlasts any single vendor contract.
If you want to see how far this kind of infrastructure has already spread in your own city, check the map. And if you'd rather push back before city council votes become a formality, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up to the meetings where these decisions actually get made.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KOIN 6, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.