The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled last week that the City of Detroit illegally approved a 2022 contract to expand its use of the ShotSpotter gunshot-detection technology.
The court said the city failed to comply with its own 2021 surveillance ordinance, which requires specific community input procedures outlining how the technology works.
“Given the inherent invasiveness of surveillance technology, the City adopted specific procedural requirements that must be met when procuring such technology. These requirements were not met,” Judge Kristina Robinson Garrett and Judge Brock Swartzle wrote in the opinion. “With surveillance and similar technology ever encroaching into every recess of modern life, procedural safeguards cannot be ignored or downplayed by government actors as mere technicalities.”
The ruling stems from a lawsuit from Detroit residents and the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, a nonprofit organization. Defendants include the City and several of its officials involved the procurement of the ShotSpotter technology.
It’s the latest development in the controversy over the police surveillance tool that police accountability experts and community activists say is an invasion of civil liberties and doesn’t work.
In November 2022, plaintiffs sued defendants to invalidate the contracts, seeking
declaratory relief, mandamus, and injunctive relief. Plaintiffs alleged that DPD failed to make a surveillance report available on the city website 14 days before the required hearings and meetings and that the DPD’s responses in the report were inadequate.
The court agreed, prior to Sept. 28 the date the city was required to post the report, there were several key committee meetings and formal sessions of the City Council, during which requests to extend and expand the ShotSpotter technology were discussed— including the session during which the City Council approved the Extension Contract.
The City Council also continued to discuss the Expansion Contract on October 4, 2022, fewer than 14 days after the posting, though approval of the expansion contract was ultimately delayed a week.
“Thus, the record confirms that defendants repeatedly violated the requirement that the STSR “be made available on the City’s website at least 14 days prior to holding any of the hearings or meetings” identified elsewhere in that Ordinance,” the panel of judges wrote.
In a statement to press, the city’s top lawyer, Detroit corporation counsel Conrad Mallet, said the city can continue to use Shotspotter despite the court ruling.
“In its opinion, the Court of Appeals recognized the City of Detroit’s defenses to the lawsuit that may result in another dismissal by the trial court,” Mallett said.
Police leaders have defended the use of the tool, saying they’ve seen reductions in crime in areas where ShotSpotter microphones have been installed. They also say the audio taken from the gunshot detection monitoring system is not being used to spy on innocent residents. DPD policy states that recorded audio shall only be reviewable when pertinent to an active investigation involving a firearm discharge.
Judge Kirsten Frank Kelly dissented from the majority opinion, arguing there wasn’t legal standing to challenge the decision since plaintiffs failed to show how Detroit’s violation of the ordinance caused them harm.
Kelly also disagreed with the characterization of ShotSpotter as surveillance technology despite that being its stated purpose. She said it is “no different than an individual overhearing the sound of a gunshot and making a call to the police, or a device that registers and records the speed that a car is traveling on the road.”
