New Haven Independent

Posted by: pedro | April 11, 2008 1:10 PM

I don't have any problem with them respecting the confidentiality of people applying for the job. What if any of us were applying to a city job and didn't want our boss or coworkers to find out? That happens all the time. While I commend Paul for asking the tough questions, I think that Rob adequately explained why the search is structured the way it is.

Posted by: me | April 11, 2008 1:13 PM

Gee Paul, you had that kid dancing! I don't unerstand why the search is so "Top Secret." I hope they hire a chief soon becasue this kid needs to stop commenting on NHPD business, he's clueless.

Posted by: FIX THE SCHOOLS | April 11, 2008 2:21 PM

Imagine if instead of firing the chief for presiding over a corrupt and failed department, the mayor lauded him for the steady progress that the department had made in reducing overall crime over decades.

Imagine if instead of holding a joint press conference with the guardian angels and partnering with them to make the streets safer, instead the mayor had pressured them into leaving town.

Imagine if instead of listening to Rabbi Greer, the mayor had made personal and public attacks against him, questioned his motives for his criticism, and resisted any of the suggested reforms.

Imagine that every public statement that the mayor made was filled with dubious and twisted facts about long term reduction of crime stats and was accompanied by an admonition to neighbors that if only they were more responsible, they wouldn't be shot and mugged as frequently.

Imagine if in the face of questions or criticism about New Haven's crime in it's poor neighborhoods, the mayor and the chief took out back page ads of the Register bragging that no one who lives on St. Ronan street was mugged or shot in the last year - proof positive that New Haven had a world class police department.

Imagine that instead of conducting a national search for the best possible turn-around leader for the department, the mayor said "We don't need to go outside of our own community to find another chief. Our chief is doing a great job!"

FIX THE SCHOOLS

Posted by: janem | April 12, 2008 5:31 PM

Before you blog bomb me as a party-pooping naysayer, consider that I like everyone else am tired of the frequency of gunfire and from what I have read, this system is OK to good at helping police find it. But in order for New Haveners to make truly informed decisions, they need to have a truly informed discussion.

In order to do that we need a couple of things. First we need the system broken down so that its capabilities - intended and accidental capabilities - are utterly transparent.

Next we need to analyze the potential uses and abuses of the technology, because as we all know, people will be using the technology and judging the evidence it provides. Unfortunately, there has not been a tool of any kind that has not been misused at one time or another, in some cases, habitually.

Human integrity is essential to the system being used well and its evidence being judged fairly. As much as anything else, the PERF report was supposed to respond to a lack of human integrity in the justice system in New Haven that apparently went unnoticed (in the way open secrets go "unnoticed") for a long time and which federal prosecutors suggested they found by scratching the surface here.

The human context into which this system will be placed is one where evidence has been manipulated in the near past and where allegations about prosecutors being out of bounds and making controversial judgments calls are not uncommon. The context is also Connecticut, where the judiciary and law enforcement agencies are relatively more closed and less transparent than in other states. This makes oversight by press and public more difficult on the best day.

So we need to have a good idea not only about how it works but how it can be misused and how potentially it can lead to wrong results, intentionally or not.

Spoken word--
The company needs to disclose with excruciating transparency exactly how the system picks up non-gunfire audio. How it transmits it, not just when or how it might record it. Obviously, the biggest concern for residents would be spoken word.

In most news articles this is glossed over entirely: Reporters usually add a one-liner that the company says the system picks up no voices.

On the company's web site, however, it provides more info, but is still too lacking in detail. It says that within 20 feet of one of the microphones decipherable conversations are picked up and undecipherable ones a little farther than that. It points out that those would be recorded only if a gunshot happened to go off during this conversation and adds that the microphones usually are placed on building tops and telephone poles. (One would hope that a unit is not placed on the telephone pole right outside your third floor doctor's office, lawyer's office, apartment, and so on.)

Again, what it doesn't say is if live monitoring of the microphones is going on at all times without recording, outside the times when a gunshot is going off and the system is "triggered" to triangulate the shot and record the audio. Presumably the microphones are on all the time. Is there a speaker in the dispatch center that's on all the time or could be with the flick of a switch? Best not to speculate too much - we just need to find out from the company how it works. The company talks about its intended use, but needs to say more about its actual capabilities. They should be willing to supply the info without hesitation and we should expect no less.

If there is a "trust me" factor between what it is capable of and what its intended and approved use is, (especially if the capability is easily accessed and therefore tempting) we need to know what it is and make an informed decision about it. One word of caution, past studies show that where abuse is easy, it often becomes rampant. Ten years from now I don't want to be reading a GAO report on rampant insider abuse of ShotSpotter technologies.

Dragnet effect--
Another concern with the technology is how officers will respond to a scene. If the technology pinpoints a shot in a 40-foot area (reports vary about accuracy) will police consider anyone who happens to be milling about or in their homes in that 40-foot area suspicious? More so than when responding to a report called in on 911? How far will they go? How much will this disrupt the lives of law-abiding people? It's a legitimate question.

Skewing traditional analysis--
How will ShotSpotter evidence affect the judgment of police, prosecutors and judges in a variety of scenarios? Every ShotSpotter event, detention and arrest will be different. Each case will have its own characteristics.

Let's consider one negative scenario: (Negative scenarios would be necessary to evaluate the system's weak points. Positive scenarios aren't going to do that.) This supposedly happened in Washington DC., but if it didn't, it at least provides a hypothetical: Police shot and killed a fleeing subject on foot who shot at them. The ShotSpotter recorded what is believed to be the suspect's shot from one type of gun followed by the officer's shot from his gun. But police never recovered the suspect's gun. Will the shooting spark an investigation into the killing? Will the ShotSpotter evidence kill the investigation? Should it?

Because plea bargains are the norm, trials are so exceedingly rare, and the product is new, ShotSpotter evidence has never been tested at trial. Apparently the first case that includes ShotSpotter evidence is slated to take place in Washington DC. This is a really important trial for the technology and its manufacturer. Being admissible as evidence is of course huge and I guess (?) could make it possible to obtain warrants in the future. This is a trial to watch.

Deciding to buy the tool is only the first decision. Procedures and protocol for operating it, acting on its signals, and weighing its value as evidence by prosecutors, by judges and by juries will entail a lot of additional decisions, some only possible later on.

Some things to think about and talk about with city alders, police, neighbors. I hope Rob Smuts and alders work on getting us the answers.

These are questions, not conclusions.

Below are links to articles and a video on the ShotSpotter, and ShotSpotter's FAQ page.

--Excerpt from ShotSpotter's FAQ page on its website, which is at this url: http://www.shotspotter.com/products/faq.html#question4

"What about my privacy?
ShotSpotter is committed to preserving privacy rights. ShotSpotter systems do not trigger on human speech or other non-threatening sounds. Furthermore, our sensors render human speech unintelligible at distances greater than 20 feet away from our sensors, and therefore even if someone were to be speaking coincidentally at the same time as a gunshot is detected (hence triggering the system), the system would likely only record the sound of the voice, while the words themselves would remain garbled. What about people standing less than 20 feet away from the sensor? Remember that ShotSpotter sensors are deployed on rooftops, telephone poles or in other restricted-access locations. Locations are specifically chosen to avoid the possibility of people or conversations being overheard."

--Christian Science Monitor, 1-22-07
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p01s03-ussc.html

"High-Tech Police Tool Pinpoints Where A Gun Is Fired: Gunshot Detection Technology Systems Offer A Trove Of Data, But Are Not Dead-On Accurate, Raising Concerns About Civil Liberties."

--Examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/a-1302140~D_C__may_use_gun_technology_in_landscaper_s_murder_trial.html

D.C. may use gun technology in landscaper's murder trial
(This apparently will be the first test of the technology at trial.)

--Wired Magazine, March 2007
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/shotspotter.html?pg=1&topic=shotspotter&topic_set=

--Wire Science
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/195-shotspotter.html
video news mini-features on ShotSpotter

Posted by: janem | April 12, 2008 6:25 PM

To Paul, I don't know, you might want to move this blog to a new heading just for ShotSpotter because I have more to post.

A rep from the company got back to me on a saturday, which was really swell of him, and said this, with more detail to follow next week:

"The microphones used in our sensors are pretty much the same as those in a cordless phone or cell phone. If you try an experiment in which you take your cell phone outside, walk twenty feet away, and talk at a normal level, someone on the other end of the phone is not going to be able to understand you. Also, the system doesn't trigger on anything other than loud, impulsive noises heard at at least three locations (for triangulation), which obviously human voices don't qualify as. (If we triggered on human voices, dogs barking, car doors slamming, etc., the system would be totally overloaded.) Also, we only have a few seconds of audio (4 seconds or so) per gunfire incident, which is a very short window."

This kind of microphone would be pretty weak for voice and as long as it was mounted far from a window in your hypothetical third or fourth floor home, office, what have you, and I guess, you aren't shouting, it isn't going to be intrusive.

The "sensors" are microphones.

Posted by: citysavior | April 12, 2008 10:04 PM

great job paul. whats your next step? I believe that you should get any list or resumes from the group as there is public monies being used to pay perf or is it yale money?? Its amazing how the public is being locked out of this secret squirel search. I believe the rest of the taxpayers should be appalled at the city goverments efforts to with hold this information and use out of state locations like washington and boston as there meeting locations to avoid state FOI laws.

Posted by: Gary Doyens | April 13, 2008 8:04 AM

It's amazing what lengths the city will go to in order to play hide the salami with public information. If potential candidates for top cop are willing to mask their interest at the interview stage, then what kind of "public" service will they really provide? What's their view of the public's right to know? Why don't these cops have the kind of honest relationship with their current employer that would allow them to look for advancement or better position?

I'm really tired of the relentless campaign by this administration to intentionally circumvent public information, even as they spend public money to carry out their undercover policies.

Since the cop shop is overseen by Rob Smuts - when is he going to be held accountable for the massive and uncontrolled overtime? The corruption? The lack of controls? If he's managing that department - does he not bear some responsibility for its complete mess? Answer: When pigs fly and yes.

Posted by: david streever | April 14, 2008 10:45 AM

Gary: interesting thought on responsibility and Rob: but isn't it entirely possible that he was hired & put in charge with the KNOWLEDGE that this was going on, and tasked to fix it? And so, as the scandals go public & the proper steps are taken, hasn't he done a wonderful job?

That was the assumption I made: That he was given a hard task & he's moving through it successfully. But, it's probably worth considering the possibility you raise, too. I'm just not sure how it could be proven/established.

Posted by: To David and Gary | April 14, 2008 5:56 PM

David, it's a good question. My hunch is that city hall was not in on the billy white case, which prompted these overt gestures towards fixing things.

Base it on? no proof - it's a hunch - but the mayor's demeanor at the press conference the day White was arrested: He seemed really taken by surprise to me. He did not seem as if he was ready for it, prepared for it, saw it coming or anything like that. It did not seem like an easy press conference for him to get through and although he handled it, there was a sense under the surface of the dear in the headlights. When he knows what is going on he comes off much differently.

Next, If I remember correctly, I thought Chief Ortiz said the feds contacted him about the whistle-blower at some point, not the other way around, although it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Ortiz in some way could have gotten the ball rolling or at least suspected a ball might start rolling. I didn't seem as surprised, but hard to say. One thing for sure is he wasn't thrilled with White being in the position he was in anyway, having tried to remove him from it not long ago.

Posted by: TrueBlueCT | April 14, 2008 9:25 PM

Two comments:

1) I've got to strongly disagree with Paul about the city's attempts to keep private the identity of police chief applicants. I'm sure the chances of any one qualified prospect are about 1 in 10, if not less than that, so I understand why, without confidentiality, top prospects might choose not to apply out of a fear from backlash from their current departments.

Is the public hurt by not knowing who has actually applied for the post? Maybe a little. But instead of weighing in with my two cents, or Monday morning quarterbacking, I'd much rather pay full respect to everyone who has considered coming to New Haven to head our police department.

2) What's with all the pot-shots at Smuts? If you someone wants to criticize Rob it should be more than on the basis of his appearance, and I question why the Independent would approve of the ad hominem comments.

That being said, this is a worthwhile debate, and I'm going to prompt State Rep. Mike Lawlor to see if we can't change CT's laws with regards to protecting job applicants' privacy.

Posted by: Gary Doyens | April 14, 2008 10:27 PM

David: Good points to think about. How long has Rob Smuts been on the job? How long has he known he's got huge problems with the cop shop? I don't know as I write this - but if you're actively managing a large department, it seems like you would immediately know if you're within budget or not. Police overtime has been running unchecked for years.