ShotSpotter Expansion To Be Tested Friday Night In 3 Neighborhoods
By Jeff Todd
DENVER (CBS4)- Police in Denver will test an expansion of the ShotSpotter system on Friday with live gunfire.
Between 8 p.m. and midnight Friday, people may hear live rounds being fired depending on where they live.
"First and foremost, everything is safe, we'll be doing the testing in three area, an area in east Denver, an area in west Denver and southwest Denver. I'm sure people will call about hearing shots fired, we'll send the word out to specific neighborhoods that those shots will be fired by us," said Marcus Fountain with the Denver Police Investigative Support Division.
"The testing is absolutely safe and we'll be capturing all the rounds we have in a trap, we'll also have a shield behind the trap so we want the public to know we'll have the areas cordoned off."
ShotSpotter is a gunfire detection system that uses acoustic sensors. Noises are monitored by a center in California and then forwarded on to Denver 911 dispatchers to a direct location within about 40 seconds.
Since it was installed in an undisclosed location in January, ShotSpotter has detected 1,600 gunshots. Because multiple shots can be fired a total of 450 alerts have been sent out to officers. Denver police say there have been approximately 30 arrests and 18 guns have been recovered over the history of the Program.
ShotSpotter started last year in Denver, initially only covering three square miles. The testing scheduled for Friday night is for a $525,000 expansion of the system that added six square miles of coverage in different parts of the city.
"It's very effective and ShotSpotter people say and our statistics say we use it very effectively here in Denver," Fountain said."
Jeff Todd joined the CBS4 team in 2011 covering the Western Slope in the Mountain Newsroom. Since 2015 he's been working across the Front Range in the Denver Headquarters. Follow him on Twitter @CBS4Jeff.
