Determined to hold onto the Chicago market, ShotSpotter offered Wednesday to cut its price by 48% for the next 15 months — from $1.2 million per month to $626,012 — to give the city time to evaluate gunshot detection options in an open competition the company plans to join.
The system now embedded in 12 of Chicago’s 22 most violent police districts is scheduled to be turned off on Sunday. Mayor Brandon Johnson canceled the city’s contract with SoundThinking, ShotSpotter’s parent company, honoring a campaign promise. Earlier this week, as some City Council members continued to push to keep it in place, Johnson condemned ShotSpotter as a costly waste of taxpayer dollars and little more than “walkie-talkies on a stick.”
Council proponents are equally determined to maintain the system and prepared to try again to override the mayor at Wednesday’s Council meeting.
The surprise offer to cut prices would reduce the city’s costs over 15 months to $9.5 million. The city now pays $9 million per year.
The reduction was communicated in a letter to the mayor from Gary Bunyard, ShotSpotter’s vice-president of corporate development. It includes the proposed 15-month “contract agreement” with the new bargain price.
That offer, however, depends on the Council approving the extension “no later than” Sept. 20. A second condition is that Johnson “confirms his agreement and intent to follow” the terms of the proposed 15-month extension that includes the new price.
“SoundThinking supports the city’s interests in exploring all options for responding to gun violence. The [15-month] term …should give the city of Chicago the time it requires” to seek other proposals, then “evaluate all options available to the city and then select the best solution(s) for the city moving forward,” Bunyard wrote.
“SoundThinking looks forward to participating” in that process. he wrote.
The new offer arms the Council majority already in ShotSpotter’s corner with even more ammunition to defy the mayor.
“If one life is saved with gunshot detection technololgy, then it is worth having. How can the mayor of our city put a price tag on saving lives? That’s what he’s doing by not investing in gunshot detection technology,” Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) told a news conference Wednesday morning.
Lopez noted that, according to information provided by the Chicago Police Department in response to a Freedom of Information request, 1,976 gunshot victims were identified by ShotSpotter alerts in the 19-month period ending July 31.
Pointing to the price cut, Lopez said: “Mayor Johnson, how can you ignore this?”
Convinced they have the required 34 votes, they plan to suspend the rules for immediate consideration of a ShotSpotter ordinance that’s been stalled in committee. It would empower Police Superintendent Larry Snelling to sign a new contract with ShotSpotter. If that ordinance fails, their back-up plan is to hold a special meeting right after Wednesday’s regular session. At the special meeting, they would consider a new ordinance empowering the executive director of the obscure Office of Public Safety Administration to sign the new contract.
The Council already tried to tie Johnson’s hands when it comes to getting rid of ShotSpotter, when it voted 34 to 14 on a measure blocking Johnson from pulling the technology from any ward without a meeting of the public safety committee and approval by the full Council.
Johnson has ignored that ordinance, arguing that he, alone, has the power to approve city contracts.
On Monday, Johnson condemned that Council for refusing to give up the fight.
“I would just hope that the alders recognize that we cannot mimic the behavior of the federal government where rules are just being broken because you have the interests of corporations who are trying to sell a product that we’ve spent almost $100 million on,” the mayor said.
Johnson campaigned on a promise to get rid of ShotSpotter to appease an anti-technology movement that gained steam after the police of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in March 2021.
The mayor made good on that promise, even though Snelling — Johnson’s own pick to run CPD — is among ShotSpotter’s biggest cheerleaders.
Johnson was so determined to keep his promise he announced his decision to cancel the contract before finalizing an exit plan. That forced him to pay a premium to negotiate a extension that maintained ShotSpotter through the traditionally violent summer months includng the Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago last month.
Proponents of the gunshot detection technology wanted to force a City Council vote Wednesday on an ordinance empowering CPD Supt. Larry Snelling to sign a new contract with ShotSpotter. But by putting it on her committee agenda for Monday, Ald. Michelle Harris can prevent full Council action later next week.
The Police and Fire Committee approved an order championed by South Side Ald. David Moore that would empower the local alderperson to decide whether to keep ShotSpotter in their ward and prohibit the mayor from eliminating the technology in a ward where the local alderperson supports it without a full Council vote.
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