http://www.thelaunchbox.blogspot.com/2012/03/contract-one-nearly-done.html
Keep in mind these pictures are taken from several feet below the active traffic on Second Avenue.
I never read anything about corruption regarding ShotSpotter, nor did I find any mentions in news archives.
The article I found just mentions that there was significant debate in Redwood City before buying the system from Trilon for $85K. "Opponents, however, claim it is a boondoggle and that the money could be better spent elsewhere, such as on hiring more police officers." (SFChronicle, 3/18/97, "Redwood City Endorses Gunshot Locator System")
The National Institute of Justice funded a study of the ShotSpotter system in Redwood City and Dallas.
The December 1999 report can be found on the NIJ website:
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/179274.pdf
The report compared Alliant's SECURES system in Dallas to Trilon's ShotSpotter system in Redwood City.
It sounds like they had a lot of fun with this test in RWC:
Of the 31 field trial events, 8 tested the MP5 assault rifle, 13 tested the.38 caliber pistol rounds, and 10 tested the 12 gauge shotgun. The technology annunciated shotgun tests at the highest rate (90 percent), followed by pistol tests (77 percent), and the MP5 assault rifle (63 percent). Overall, the ShotSpotter technology annunciated nearly 80 percent of the test shots (true positives) and failed to annunciate random gunfire events about 20 percent of the time (false negatives).
Dallas chose not to allow the firing of blank rounds on random street corners:
The [Redwood City] police department approved the firing of test blanks under controlled conditions to measure the performance of the technology in June 1997. Similar permissions were not granted during the field test of the SECURES system in Dallas.
If you're wondering why Redwood City would be picked, keep in mind that neighboring East Palo Alto had the highest per capita murder rate in the country after a string of drug murders in 1992. (The homicide rate is lower now.)
The NIJ report page is pretty entertaining reading:
If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.
