That's what I get from faulty memory. However, evidence is still being used even when it's not directly brought up in court.

"In the 2015 Massachusetts case, the court refused to allow the introduction of ShotSpotter audio after the defendant argued the audio was captured and obtained in violation of that state’s wiretap laws. Police in that case requested and received an extended audio clip from the company that captured people discussing the shooting, including one calling out the defendant’s name."

In theory any evidence from those audio recordings is tainted and no longer admissible, therefore police should want to avoid listing to any of it. But... by not bringing it up in court police can use parallel construction to get around those issues.

Those "extended audio clip[s]" don't seem to be available anymore as a matter of policy after 2019, following an external privacy audit done by the Policing Project at NYU Law. It also seems that police don't have access to audio outside of gunshot incidents.

https://www.policingproject.org/shotspotter

https://www.shotspotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ShotS...

edit: Good point, I agree that parallel construction is an important concern, especially since there's so little transparency in police investigations. One possible solution is to force them to limit the duration recorded to only a few seconds. (I previously thought that's how ShotSpotter worked. Turns out they've kept days of audio before, apparently for "debugging purposes.")

> Drug crime is known to be fairly evenly distributed across different incomes, arrests are extremely biased.

Keep in mind that the reverse is true for gun crime, where low-income minority communities suffer from the lowest clearance rates.

Audio evidence is being used such as in the Massachusetts case.

PS: You are quoting my previous post not an edit: "Drug crime is known to be fairly evenly distributed across different incomes, arrests are extremely biased." is from further up the thread.

Yes, I know that part is a previous post. You also heavily edited GP, but current state of comments is reasonable now.