Wilmington to lease $415,000 gunshot sensor network

Wilmington will use a mix of federal, state and city money to pay $415,000 to lease a gunfire detection system that police officials say will improve investigations.

Wilmington Mayor Dennis P. Williams said about a third of the new ShotSpotter system's costs will be covered by the city. The rest, he said, will be covered by state and federal money. An exact breakdown wasn't available Wednesday.

The Wilmington City Council is expected to approve the three-year lease for ShotSpotter technology during its meeting Thursday evening, Council President Theo Gregory said.

Provided by Newark, Calif.-based SST, the technology uses sound sensors to find the origin of a gunshot within a few feet. ShotSpotter then sends an instant alert to dispatchers and patrol cars.

Wilmington police hope to start using ShotSpotter within three months of council approval, said spokesman Cpl. Mark Ivey.

Man shot to death in Wilmington

An existing gunshot detection system the city installed in 2012 was covered by a $250,000 federal grant awarded to the state. Called SENTRI, an acronym for Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition, the current system's sensors – deployed on 18 street corners – detect a gunshot, prompting cameras to pivot toward the sound, zoom in on the scene and take images of suspects, victims, witnesses or a fleeing vehicle.

But SENTRI, which has yet to record a single shooting scene, has been criticized by some city council members as a waste of taxpayer money.

Gregory said he thinks the money on ShotSpotter will be better spent than the grant for SENTRI because the new system is more effective.

"It's going to be an improvement over the old system," he said. "It will tell you more specifically where the shot took place."

Gregory, however, said using cameras to track shooting scenes shouldn't be halted. In fact, he's advocating that the city later invest in cameras that are much more powerful than the current SENTRI cameras.

"For ShotSpotter to be effective, you got to have the appropriate cameras," he said. "They have to work in tandem."

While there have been discussions with police officials about the type of cameras the city wants to complement ShotSpotter, the device models and company that will furnish them has yet to be determined, Gregory said. The city moved forward with ShotSpotter because the system was "ready to come online now."

Gregory said he'd like for the city to be ready to buy the new cameras by July.

"The ShotSpotter without the cameras severely weakens it as a crime-fighting tool," he said.

Williams said Wilmington's pursuit of the new system has been better handled than when the city went after SENTRI. For ShotSpotter, the city brought in SST to talk about the technology and gave some city council members the opportunity to hear an explanation of how the technology works, he said.

"SENTRI was put together at a rapid pace," Williams said. "It wasn't that clearly thought out."

At a Public Safety Committee meeting on Feb. 10, council members, including councilwoman Loretta Walsh and Gregory, heard about ShotSpotter from an SST executive. The committee, with councilman Michael A. Brown absent, unanimously voted in favor of sending the ShotSpotter proposal to the full council. Brown backed the new system in a written statement released before the meeting.

Contact Yann Ranaivo at 324-2837 or yranaivo@delawareonline.com