The problem is not that no one could build a system to detect and triangulate gunshot sounds.

The problem is that this specific company seems to be strong on marketing claims and light on engineering legwork. There have also been some implications that point to (in my opinion) post-indictment editing of records to gin up post-hoc probable cause in some cases. No smoking gun (ugh) to prove it but concerning.

What is known is that ShotSpotter reports seem to rarely create useful leads for police. It would hardly be the first (or second, third, fourth, et al) time someone promised to revolutionize policing only to hand over snake oil. Then when the money faucet begins to dry up some companies just can't help fabricating proof of their technology or even falsifying evidence to make sure police "see the value" in continuing to pay for it. Most police departments are being taken for a ride. Some fully understand the wink-wink-nod-nod going on and appreciate the company's "flexibility".

Your "gut feeling" does not comport with any evidence presented so far. Until SpotShotter is compelled to reveal their techniques and present them to the defense, as the defense is entitled under law, it's just a magic box that conveniently agrees with the police when they want it to.

> My gut feeling is that shotspotter mostly works and is mostly accurate

I don't want to base our legal system on your gut feelings. If ShotSpotter is mostly accurate, then they should have no problem releasing the requested material and proving that's the case.

Otherwise I will have to assume it's just the magic crime detection box as described above.

Word. I detest these kind of posts.

East Palo Alto has shotspotter installed throughout. In summer of 2020 there were several weeks of nightly nearly non stop fireworks. Shotspotter should have been able to help the police pinpoint the locations of these illegal fireworks yet no enforcement actually happened.

Now part of that might be because of the defacto police strike in response to "defund the police", but the noise went on long enough and was heard in nearby wealthy cities enough that actually motivated police forces were pushing to fix the problem and yet shotspotter proved useless.

This leads to the allegation that shotspotter doesn't actually work at all and is just there so when a hothead young cop does something wrong without thinking the police department can, after the fact, get shotspotter to gin up some probable cause.