Funding OK’d for gunshot-detection system

By Harold Gwin

ShotSpotter will help police respond quicker to reports of gunfire.

YOUNGSTOWN — The city will spend about $500,000 to buy an acoustic gunshot-location system that will help police pinpoint where shots are fired.

The city Board of Control approved a plan Thursday to spend up to $530,000 to buy the system from ShotSpotter Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

City council approved the purchase Dec. 16.

Police Chief Jimmy Hughes secured a federal grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance about a year ago to pick up the cost of buying and installing the system.

ShotSpotter is an electronic system that uses sensors and satellite mapping to pinpoint gunfire within 10 feet of its origin and speed up response time. The system sets up sensors in a zone, uses triangulation to locate the source of the sound and relays that information to a dispatcher. It can even determine the shooter’s speed and direction of travel when multiple shots are fired.

The system is already in use in numerous cities across the country.

Hughes said he hopes to have it operational here by March or April.

Now that the purchase has been approved, SpotShotter will send in a team to help pinpoint where sensors should be mounted on buildings, poles or towers in areas of the city hit with frequent reports of gunfire, he said. The system will be monitored by police dispatchers and the patrol commander.

Hughes said ShotSpotter will give the city 20 mobile sensors, valued at $20,000, to be mounted on patrol cars that are being used in those targeted areas to speed up police-response times. Those units will have the same street overview and address location ability that the dispatcher will see, he said.

The system has worked well in other cities, Hughes said, explaining that it becomes a deterrent to those who might choose to fire a weapon because they know the police may arrive at their location immediately after a shot is fired.

In other action at its meeting Thursday, the board, which included only the finance director and law director,

UApproved spending $8,700 from the general fund to do emergency foundation and basement-wall stabilization at Fire Station No. 3, the Belle Vista Station. Fire Chief John O’Neill said that a corner of the 1991 building has settled, resulting in cracks in the wall under the firefighter living quarters. The area of the building that houses a firetruck is built on a concrete slab and isn’t affected. The city will hire Mathews Wall Anchor Inc. of Beaver Falls, Pa., to do the work.

UApproved paying A.P. O’Horo of Liberty $46,162 for the emergency replacement of a 500-foot section of waterline on Mahoning Avenue near state Route 11. The line had three breaks in that section while the Ohio Department of Transportation was doing recent bridge work over Route 11.

URenewed an agreement with the Animal Charity League that has the league providing the services of a humane agent to work in the city. Youngstown pays $17,000 a year for the service.

gwin@vindy.com