Democrat-run cities throughout the country are canceling contracts with gunfire detection systems that help police quickly respond to crimes. Their reason? The life-saving technology is “racist,” they claim.

The most well-known system is ShotSpotter, which uses a network of outdoor acoustic sensors in high-crime areas to triangulate where gunfire is coming from and alert law enforcement. According to SoundThinking, the company that makes ShotSpotter, only 20 percent of shootings are ever called in to 911 – meaning that the system fills an enormous gap in the ability of law enforcement to treat gunshot victims and catch criminals.

ShotSpotter was first deployed in 1997 and is now in use by more than 180 cities. Dozens of local officials and law enforcement leaders have testified about its effectiveness.

Police chiefs in Detroit and Syracuse have shared how these tools help them reduce crime and aid victims. “Oftentimes, nobody called 911 and I’ve got somebody bleeding out,” Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettinson shared recently after questioning by city council members. In one study from Cincinnati, serious gun violence declined by 46 percent in the areas of the city where ShotSpotter was installed. In St. Louis, reported assaults in police beats with ShotSpotter installed declined by 30 percent.

Despite this astonishing track record of success, the tool has come under criticism from left-wing groups who say that it leads to more policing in minority communities. Several cities have even shockingly canceled or declined to renew their ShotSpotter contracts, claiming that the technology is somehow racist.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard University, recently decided to cut ties with SoundThinking after a group of left-wing activists from the Democratic Socialists of America raised concerns about “hidden microphones in working class, majority black and brown neighborhoods in our city.” (The microphones, notably, only detect gunshots, not conversations.)

Another socialist said the technology is used to “further inequality and systemic racism” in the city, as The Daily Caller reported. Other critics appear to reject the whole concept of policing, arguing that the use of ShotSpotter will lead to cops coming into immigrant neighborhoods which will then lead to deportation of illegal aliens.

But Cambridge is far from the only city to ditch the highly successful technology.

City council members in Durham, North Carolina voted in 2024, over the objection of the mayor, to stop using ShotSpotter after just two years.

“Critics on the council, and members of the public who spoke at the meeting, said ShotSpotter disproportionately targeted Black and Brown communities,” WUNC reported in 2024. (Never mind the fact that those communities are statistically where most of the gun violence occurs – and that it is precisely the law-abiding residents there who will suffer most from the removal of ShotSpotter.)

Among the most prominent critics of the technology is Chicago’s left-wing Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers’ union organizer and “defund the police” advocate.

Dubbed “BLM Brandon” for his support for the Black Lives Matter agenda, Johnson ignored the concerns of the City Council, which is dominated by Democrats, and cut ties with ShotSpotter in 2024. He then scrambled to extend the contract through the Democratic National Convention set for summer 2024, paying a higher rate for the extension than the city paid for a full year, as AMAC Newsline previously reported – effectively admitting that yes, ShotSpotter does indeed help keep the city safer.

But now the mayor is touting a study by an activist professor, Robert Vargas, who claims that police response times improved after the city discontinued its use of ShotSpotter.

On May 27, Johnson “pointed to a study from the Justice Project at the University of Chicago that determined response times where the technology operated have improved 4.2 minutes on average since he ended the ShotSpotter deal in September 2024,” as the Chicago Tribune reported.

Johnson criticized his opponents for “promoting fear and casting doubt on our effort to improve safety.”

Yet the study has come under criticism, as observers note that the study excluded police response times to gunshots – in other words, the main thing that ShotSpotter is supposed to help with. The study also compared data from the summertime, when crime is typically higher, to data from the autumn, when crime is typically lower.

“Fall and winter emergency calls will naturally be fewer than in the spring and summer, when violence and accidents increase,” the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board noted on May 29. “So faster response times are more likely to be caused by the lower volume of calls than the absence of ShotSpotter.”

The study also completely ignores how the technology helps police arrive to assist victims before they bleed to death. Since the contract ran out in 2024, independent news organization CWB Chicago “identified 84 cases in which gunshot victims appear to have endured lengthy waits for emergency responses in areas that were previously monitored by ShotSpotter.”

About 60 percent of these victims died, according to a May 31 report from the crime watch website. Those findings comport with research from the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab which found the technology saves about 85 people a year.

And of course, many of those lives saved, if not all, are black and Hispanic residents of the city’s dangerous South and West Side neighborhoods.

In other words, the “researchers” in this study either unintentionally published extremely shoddy work or intentionally skewed the data to justify their preferred political narrative. Either way, Johnson’s “evidence” against gunshot detection technology is totally unreliable.

Unfortunately for residents of liberal cities, Democrats’ dangerous obsession with obstructing the ability of law enforcement to stop crime and punish criminals only appears to be accelerating. In an equally inexplicable move, the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently removed all 600 of its neighborhood watch signs to “promote inclusivity.” And of course, that’s not to mention the army of left-wing prosecutors throughout the country who refuse to prosecute violent criminals with dozens of prior arrests.

The only people who will feel more “included” thanks to Democrats’ efforts are the criminals terrorizing American streets. Rarely in history has there been such an overt and egregious case of leaders actively dismantling the infrastructure that keeps law-abiding residents safe.

Matt Lamb is an AMAC Newsline contributor and associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.