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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

I was speaking more in a practical sense, and I think you are responding more in ideal sense. I agree some of those things would be nice.

However, at some point there are too many shots to even show up for, let alone do the more involved tasks you mention, and I think this is the situations some cities using the service found themselves in. At that point, it just becomes a data collection project, with unclear goals.

For what it is worth, I think we have ShotSpotter in my location, but have never seen police physically responding to shots fired. That is not to say it isn't useful in other locations

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Which of the listed items is not practical? This is all routine police business.

Having the resources and political will to respond is a separate matter entirely, but that has virtually nothing to do with the importance of treating gunfire as an emergency.

I think 2-5 are pretty unlikely and/or impractical given the conflicting demands on officer time in the real world.

For context, my city has a 20 minute average response time for priority #1 911 calls (violent crime in progress). Response time for priory #2 & #3 calls is around 6 hours ( non-violent crime in progress, in progress disputes, just completed felonies, and stolen cars).

There are 10,000 ShotSpotter events a year.

As much as I wish it weren't the case, I simply dont think looking for casings, getting statements, and or performing a search is likely to be the highest demand for police time.

>I think 2-5 are pretty unlikely and/or impractical given the conflicting demands on officer time in the real world.

Respectfully, you don't seem to have any experience with law enforcement or military. 2-5 happen routinely.

>There are 10,000 ShotSpotter events a year.

And that is a separate issue of capacity vs demand. Nevertheless, a system like ShotSpotter, when paired with resources and a triage system, is a very real augmentation to law enforcement capacity.

The problems with SpotShotter are completely separate from this. That's precisely why law enforcement seems to want it so badly.

>And that is a separate issue of capacity vs demand.

That is the only point that I was making. I already agreed that they would do the things on your list in an ideal world.

My point was that the data integrity is less of an issue for police than their bandwidth to take action on it. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Once you are already in a triage situation,the questions is what you cut to spend more time on shotspotter. I think in my city they will sometimes do a drive the area to see if there is anything obvious. They certainly cant ignore a home invasion to collect casings at the scene or go door to door asking questions.

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