ShotSpotter Defamation Lawsuit May Prove a Sink-or-Swim Battle
Gunshots ring out on a city street, and bystanders are suddenly gripped with the fear that help might not arrive soon enough.
Across the United States, cities have made strident efforts to reduce the average amount of time that it takes for police to respond to calls, but despite those efforts, the average time in New York, for example, remains over six minutes for even the most critical calls.[1] When it comes specifically to shooting incidents, numerous cities have turned to ShotSpotter, a company in continuing development of a system known as Respond.[2] This system purports to empower police departments to drastically reduce the average response time to incidents of firearm discharge.[3] This is accomplished, says the company, using a complex system of microphones which are installed in public places.[4] When a gunshot is detected, the microphones measure the loudness of the sound and the company’s software uses that data to triangulate the location of the apparent gunshot — all done in mere seconds.[5]
According to some police departments, this technology has been a boon,[6] but the system has not been lacking in critiques.[7] A July 2021 article from Vice’s Motherboard, for example, gave attention to the criticism of some community activists against ShotSpotter for allegedly targeting Black and brown communities when deciding where to install the sensor microphones.[8] Now, ShotSpotter has filed a libel and defamation action against VICE Media, LLC, the publishers of the critical articles.
ShotSpotter did not mince words in its recent filings. “In furtherance of its marketing strategy, VICE targeted ShotSpotter with a story, podcast, and tweets… that falsely accused ShotSpotter of conspiring with police to fabricate gunshots from thin air to frame innocent Black men.”[9] The complaint further contends that the media company “recklessly disregarded or intentionally concealed facts” that would tend to rebut the company’s alleged narrative, and that the defendants’ agents “deliberately misrepresented court records” that demonstrate the veracity of ShotSpotter’s information.[10]
With no answer filed by Vice Media as of writing, it is yet unclear how the company plans to rebut the charges coming from ShotSpotter. But this is not the first time the company has been criticized for its product’s effectiveness and fair application. A recent investigation by the Associated Press found that “the [Respond] system can miss live gunfire right under its microphones, or misclassify the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots.”[11] The same report noted that “the company guards how its closed system works as a trade secret, a black box largely inscrutable to the public, jurors and police oversight boards.”[12]
If successful, this lawsuit may be a helpful notch in the company’s belt in convincing new and existing local governments—some of which have expressed doubts about renewing their contracts with ShotSpotter[13]—to renew. Alternatively, a loss could undermine the credibility of a product already under intense scrutiny and draw even more attention to one the company’s more vocal recent critics.
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