Screw up the timing.
No, I mean, of course that's fine.
It's totally fine.
The did Marissa described to you like,
we don't edit these.
They're what we call live on tape,
but totally whatever you need.
But just so you understand that, it's all good.
That works.
You're gonna be great.
Really?
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
All right.
Technology that picks up shots fired in Milwaukee is under the microscope.
It's called Shot Spotter, and it captures the sound of gunfire with microphone sensors
located on mostly the north and to a lesser degree the south sides of the city.
These are predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
The gunshot detection system alerts police to the location for response.
Wired magazine recently leaked the location of the audio sensors, which are accompanied
in Milwaukee by pole cameras for remote surveillance.
Last year, there were more than 14,000 Shot Spotter activations in the city.
Across the country, some 84 cities used the technology, where nearly 70% of the people
who live in those neighborhoods are black or Hispanic.
This is what our next guest calls the oversurveillance of the most heavily marginalized
communities in the country.
John McCray Jones is a policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.
And John, thanks very much for being here.
Hey, how are you doing today?
Good.
You call it dystopian that there are over 25,000 microphones and communities nationwide.
How so?
I think that this is going, not missing the forest birds for the trees.
I think that this paints the picture of the larger surveillance network that are being
built in local law enforcement inside cities around the country.
I mean, just inside Milwaukee, we have the Shot Spotters that we're going to talk about.
We have stingrays, cell site simulators.
We have automated license plate readers.
We have private cameras that are going to be accessible to the Milwaukee Police Department.
We have drones being proposed as a way of surveilling communities.
And I think when you start layering these things on top of each other, you paint this
1984 dystopian nightmare that I would like to talk to you about.
So just the use of Shot Spotter and these other technologies resulting over-policing
then of marginalized neighborhoods in your mind?
100%.
I think there's going to be a narrative push that the reason why Shot Spotters is put
in the location that they are is because these communities experience the largest amount
of gun violence.
The problem with this narrative is that multiple studies have proved that Shot Spotters doesn't
actually reduce gun violence.
There's a 2021 report out of Northwestern that talks about how 86% of Shot Spotters
alert does not lead to any report of a crime at all.
And there's a 10-year study out of St. Louis that says that Shot Spotters does not a reduce
crime and b does not improve with police times.
So the problem is that not only does a waste of taxpayer resource by sending cops into
these neighborhoods and there's nothing that they can do to reduce gun violence, but the
second problem is that you're sending these officers who are expecting to encounter someone
with a gun into black and brown communities that are already over-policed and already
have a rocky relationship with law enforcement and you're just creating a recipe for a disaster.
Meanwhile the manufacturer of the Shot Spotter technology says it provides intelligence
that allows police to coordinate safe, efficient, and equitable responses that require fewer
resources in a way that builds community trust.
What's your response to that?
I mean that's great, but the Independence Research doesn't back that up and I think that's why
we need data out of Milwaukee to know if the privacy that we're trading, the law enforcement
and trading to these private companies actually leads to safer communities for the people
being over-policed and surveilled by Shot Spotter.
So another question, what do you think of the fact that police in my understanding are
allowed to use Shot Spotter calls to generate probable cause to search someone nearby?
That goes back to the over-policing, the fact that some unlucky person who's walking around
at night who happens to suggest to be in the vicinity of a Shot Spotter alert now has probable
charge to be stopped in frisk is kind of dystopian.
I mean the idea that you're walking through your community and just because some technology
that again going back to 2021 Northwestern study, there was over 40,000 dead end deployments
in the city of Chicago in a two-year span.
So this unreliable technology sends out an alert, police are sent to your community and
now you're stopping frisk just because you're walking around at night inside the vicinity.
So would the ACLU like to get rid of the use of Shot Spotter in Milwaukee altogether?
It's easy for us to say yes, it's easy for us to say that all these surveillance technologies
going back to automated license plate readers, private cameras being integrated into law
enforcement, drones and facial recognition should be banned.
It's also very easy for law enforcement to say, hey, these technologies are worth the
squeeze and worth the resources that were born into it.
What I want to propose is a community control over police surveillance ordinance also known
as sea cops.
These ordinances are being passed in cities around the country and they do two things.
So first any technology that law enforcement wants to use has to have a city council hearing
or whatever is the legislative body to approve that technology.
And what that does is it allows the community to come in and have input to their elected
officials and say, hey, we want this technology in our neighborhoods or no, I don't feel
comfortable with automated license plate readers tracking everywhere my car goes or no, I don't
feel comfortable with microphones being stationed in my community.
And then the second thing that sea cops ordinance does is that every year law enforcement has
to publish an annual report that goes to the city that one talks about the financial
strain that these technologies are costing communities.
And two, they actually they tell us the data on are these communities or are these technologies
actually making community safer.
And I think that's the most important aspect because we don't know if shot spotter works
in Milwaukee.
We spent millions of dollars over the past decade and how much size have rising and
fall in us in the city.
So that knowing that the privacy that we're trading is actually leading to some type of
benefit that the community is something that's worth investing off.
Is the city is the city responsive to your calls for these kinds of ordinances.
We're sorting the campaign now calling for the ordinance and we'll love the call for calling
on the city now to be responsive after this leak.
So in this this proportion is surveillance on black and brown communities.
All right.
Well, John McCray Jones, thanks very much.
I don't know what you're talking about.
You were great.
You didn't seem nervous at all.
I can't hear you.
Oh, sorry.
I'm like absolutely sweating right now.
You don't show it.
You look cool as a cucumber and also whatever you were talking about, you were great.
No, it was really good and and super informative.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for, I guess, walking me through this.
This was a good nerve wracking, but a good experience.
Good, good.
Well, we'll follow this.
It'll be interesting to see about that ordinance.
Okay.
Thank you, sir.
Is that all you guys here for me?
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
All right.
You have a nice one.
You too.
That'll be great.
Thank you so much.
All right.
You too.
All right.
You too.