FORT GREENE — Technology that detects gunshots as they happen will be deployed in Fort Greene and Washington Heights this summer, the police department announced, the latest areas to receive the ShotSpotter devices in the city.
The gun-detection technology will be installed in Brooklyn’s 88th Precinct and the 33rd Precinct in Manhattan by the end of summer, according to NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Jessica Tisch.
The NYPD will install ShotSpotter audio sensors on street poles, buildings and rooftops so the devices can detect the sound of gunshots in the neighborhood, then send real-time alerts to local precincts, Tisch said.
► READ MORE: Here's How the NYPD's Expanding ShotSpotter System Works
The police department first tried ShotSpotter in violence-prone precincts in Brooklyn and The Bronx in 2015, then significantly expanded the program last summer. Now, 54 square miles of the city are covered by the technology, Tisch said, with six more square miles planned in the Fort Greene and Washington Heights expansion.
“ShotSpotter has been an incredible tool for the NYPD. It’s contributed to faster response times to 911 calls or to incidents of shots fired. We’ve taken a lot of firearms off the street because of it. We credit [it] for a number of our gun arrests,” she said at a media briefing Thursday.
Particularly, she said, ShotSpotter is helpful in situations where no one calls 911; according to NYPD data, she said a 911 call is made to police in only 16 percent of shooting incidents citywide.
Tisch said the department is also planning to expand ShotSpotter by year’s end in an additional nine square miles, including parts of the 121st Precinct in Staten Island, sections of northern Queens and parts of The Bronx.
News of the expansion was first reported by AM New York.
