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Minneapolis News
Estelle Timar-Wilcox

Minneapolis City Council approves expansion of ShotSpotter

A woman speaks and is seen on a tv screen
Council member LaTrisha Vetaw at a meeting in July.
Ben Hovland | MPR News

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The Minneapolis City Council today extended a contract for gunshot detection technology, amid debate over whether or not it makes the city safer.

Council members approved an extension to March 2026 with the company SoundThinking for its ShotSpotter technology. ShotSpotter microphones are meant to detect loud, sudden noises and help police respond to gunshots. 

Law enforcement had asked the council to extend the contract through 2027 and suggested expanding it to several more neighborhoods. The city currently uses it in north Minneapolis and around the Phillips neighborhood.

Council members instead approved the shorter contract extension and a smaller geographic expansion, in the interest of collecting more data on the technology. The council committed just over $422,000 to the expanded contract.

“If one person’s life is being saved, I think it’s worth it,” Council member LaTrisha Vetaw said. “I would never say that this stops gun violence… but what ShotSpotter does is tell us what’s happening in our wards, how it’s happening, and with what, and I want that for my ward.”

Police chief Brian O’Hara told the council that the technology has helped officers locate shooting victims and respond to violence.

But council member Jeremiah Ellison said he didn’t feel there was enough data to approve a bigger contract. 

“A long extension of the contract, a massive expansion that just assumes this works the way we want it to and doesn’t vet whether or not it does — I felt like wasn’t going to be something that I was comfortable with, but voting just purely ‘no’ on the expansion didn’t seem like it was going to be in service of the community that I represent,” Ellison said. 

Council member Jason Chavez said he wants to see more data.

“I have ShotSpotter in my neighborhoods, and people are still being shot and killed in these locations,” Chavez said. “Prevention, intervention, healing, reducing and getting these guns off the street is what’s actually going to reduce gun violence, but ShotSpotter is not going to do that.” 

Some council members noted that ShotSpotter is used in neighborhoods with more residents who are people of color, saying it leads to more policing of those populations. 

“I’m a big skeptic of this technology,” Council President Elliott Payne said. “I’m a believer in civil liberties. I worry about the potential for government to have listening devices installed across a city.”

Several other cities have ended their contracts for ShotSpotter technology or passed up implementing it following skepticism about whether it improves safety and officer response time. Chicago city leaders are locked in a debate this week over whether to renew the technology.

The resolution for the contract passed unanimously, but some council members said they would have supported a longer extension, given law enforcement accounts of times this has helped them respond to shots fired. The council recently directed staff to start an independent analysis of the program to collect more data on how ShotSpotter impacts violence and police response times.