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St. Petersburg police Chief Tony Holloway isn't sold on gunshot-location technology

 
An unidentified Hillsborough County sheriff's dispatcher keeps watch over several monitors Wednesday in 2016. ShotSpotter is a gunshot triangulation system that the Sheriff's Office purchased in 2015. St. Petersburg police Chief Tony Holloway on Thursday pushed back on a proposal to bring the technology to the city. [CHRIS URSO  |   Times]
An unidentified Hillsborough County sheriff's dispatcher keeps watch over several monitors Wednesday in 2016. ShotSpotter is a gunshot triangulation system that the Sheriff's Office purchased in 2015. St. Petersburg police Chief Tony Holloway on Thursday pushed back on a proposal to bring the technology to the city. [CHRIS URSO | Times]
Published June 15, 2017

ST. PETERSBURG — Police Chief Tony Holloway pushed back Thursday against a City Council member's proposal to buy gunfire-locating technology that could help police respond faster to gun violence.

Last month, City Council member Karl Nurse convinced his fellow council members to delay spending $87,000 to outfit 15 police vehicles with dashboard cameras. Instead, he argued the money should be used to help buy a system called ShotSpotter, which can pinpoint the location of gunplay by the sound of gunshots.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: St. Petersburg's mayor, police chief promised dashboard cameras, but City Council hits the brakes

Nurse represents Midtown and said it endures about a third of the city's gunfire and activity. Cities that have used the technology have seen a 30-percent reduction in gunfire, he said.

He argued that police accountability technologies like dashboard and body cameras are necessary for police departments with officers behaving badly, Nurse said, but the St. Petersburg Police Department doesn't have accountability issues. What the city does have is a gunfire problem.

"I'm pleading with you to help the parts of the city that need it most," Nurse said.

During that May meeting, Holloway said he was interested in using a gunfire-location system.

But on Thursday he resisted the idea. The chief told City Council that on its own, ShotSpotter isn't very effective. He said it should be used in tandem with license plate readers that can scan thousands of passing vehicle tags and the placement of multiple surveillance cameras to monitor the area.

Holloway also said it would be expensive to cover an area a little larger than Midtown, costing about $350,000. There would also be $65,000 of recurring costs annually, not to mention the cost of complementary technologies.

"We don't have that in our budget," the chief said.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has been using ShotSpotter, a gunshot triangulation system, since 2015.

Holloway suggested City Council look into federal grants if they want to pursue a gunshot-location system and other new technologies. He said the Tampa Police Department was awarded a similar grant and plans to start implementing new technologies soon. But outside of research from the companies producing the hardware, he said there's little information available on the efficacy of those technologies.

City Council member Charlie Gerdes cautioned the council against treating Midtown like the only part of the city that is suffering from gun violence.

"I want to make sure that we're not telling this community that we're going to surveil the hell out of it and not the rest of the city," Gerdes said.

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Police dashboard cameras, body cameras and gunfire-locating technology don't need to be mutually exclusive, Gerdes said, but resources are limited.

Holloway said the best choice, for now, is to go ahead with the original plan to purchase 15 dash cams. He and Mayor Rick Kriseman promised that they would eventually outfit all 382 marked police vehicles with dashboard cameras. So far only 30 have them. The total cost will be $2 million.

The chief said he favors dash cams over body cams because they aid police transparency but don't have the privacy, policy and video storage issues that come with body cams. His department has been studying dashboard, body and gun-mounted cameras since he was hired in 2014.

Holloway said he hopes to conclude those studies in 2018.

"My recommendation is that we move forward with the dash cams because that's what we need and that's what we promised our citizens," he said.

The council members, meeting as the Public Services and Infrastructure Committee, agreed and voted to send the 15 dashboard cameras back to the full council for a vote on whether to purchase them.