DETROIT – The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a group of residents who filed a lawsuit against city officials over the Detroit Police Department’s use of ShotSpotter gunshot-detection technology.
The technology uses sensors to detect the sound of firearm discharge and relays the location to police.
Attorneys with the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice and the Detroit Justice Center accuse the city of violating the Community Input over Government Surveillance Ordinance when the City Council voted to extend the city’s ShotSpotter contract and to implement the technology in an expanded area in 2022.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several residents and the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.
The ordinance gives residents the right to be given notice when the city plans to acquire new surveillance technology and provide input at public meetings.
It also requires the city to publish a report, called a Surveillance Technology Specification Report (STSR), with specific information about the cost and use of the technology.
Under the ordinance, the report must be made available to the public at a designated page on the city’s website, at least 14 days prior to holding any of the required public meetings.
The report must include the description and purpose of the technology, any civil rights impacts, and information about the collection and use of the acquired data.
“It requires the city to address certain concerns of folks,” said John Philo, the executive director and legal director of the Sugar Law Center. “How it’s funded? What are the civil liberty issues that are going to arise from that surveillance technology, and how is the city going to address it?”
According to an opinion issued by the Court of Appeals, while the contracts to extend and expand the technology were on the agenda for meetings of the City Council’s Public Health and Safety Standing Committee in June, July, and September 2022, an STSR was not posted on the city’s website before those meetings.
The opinion states the report was not posted to the city’s website until late September 2022, after the extension contract had already been approved.
The City Council discussed the technology at a formal session on Oct. 4 and approved the expansion contract on Oct. 11.
The lawsuit against the city was filed in November 2022.
While a lower court originally ruled in the city’s favor, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision.
“It actually gives meaning to the ordinance,” Philo said. “If the ordinance doesn’t have to be complied with – where do we stop in saying that partial compliance is good enough?”
DPD Assistant Chief Franklin Hayes defended the department’s use of the technology, providing the following statement to Local 4:
“ShotSpotter has been an invaluable investigative tool that is helping to make our city safer.
In areas where ShotSpotter is deployed, we have seen significant reductions in gunfire. So far this year, we have recovered 244 firearms and made 131 arrests as a result of ShotSpotter cases.
ShotSpotter also helps saves lives. Just this week, DPD responded to a ShotSpotter alert of multiple shots fired, for which no 911 calls were placed.
When officers arrived, they found a critically injured victim who likely would have succumbed to his injuries at the scene had ShotSpotter technology not alerted DPD to the incident and to its location.”
Detroit Police Department Assistant Chief Franklin Hayes
Philo said the lawsuit is about protecting residents’ privacy and their right to know details of the city’s use of surveillance technology.
“It’s happening in all different ways. ShotSpotter is just one of those ways,” Philo said. “We have a right to know in the neighborhoods how we’re being watched, how we’re being monitored.”
Philo said the case will now be sent back to a lower court, where the plaintiffs will argue the two contracts should be considered void.
Local 4 also reached out to Mayor Duggan’s office for comment on this lawsuit, and as of 11 p.m., we have not heard back.