A federal lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Chicago police misused “unreliable” gunshot detection technology and failed to pursue other leads in investigating a grandfather from the city’s South Side and charging him with killing a neighbor.
Chicago prosecutors used audio picked up by a network of sensors installed by the gunshot detection company ShotSpotter as critical evidence in charging Michael Williams with murder in 2020 for allegedly shooting the man inside his car. Williams spent nearly a year in jail, and The Associated Press
ShotSpotter isn’t named as a defendant in the 103-page filing though the lawsuit claims the company’s algorithm-powered technology is flawed. The suit also alleges the city’s decision to place most of its gunshot-detection sensors in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods is racially discriminatory.
ShotSpotter has vigorously defended the reliability and validity of its system, saying evidence collected by its system has been admitted in more than 200 court cases around the country. It has also pointed to an audit the company commissioned to study the effectiveness of the technology. The filing places blame for Williams’ arrest squarely on investigating officers, who it says “put blind faith in ShotSpotter evidence they knew or should have known was unreliable” in order to charge Williams with killing 25-year-old Safarian Herring.
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