Fayetteville City Council members on Monday voted 8-2 to approve a $220,500 contract to renew the city’s use of automated gunshot detection technology ShotSpotter for one year.
Council Members Mario Benavente and Deno Hondros voted against the contract renewal.
ShotSpotter, which is owned by SoundThinking, covers areas of a city in acoustic sensors to detect potential gunfire. The technology is currently deployed in three key areas in Fayetteville: at Cliffdale and Rielly Roads, the Massey Hill neighborhood and along the Murchison Road corridor.
The decision to extend the city’s contract with SoundThinking follows a protest held by several community activist groups in mid-August. At the protest, community members and activists called for the city to cancel its contract, saying ShotSpotter increases the potential for racial bias in the areas where it is being used.
The city council’s vote also follows an independent evaluation of the technology in Fayetteville, which was made public in late August. Researchers at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law who produced the evaluation — a request from city council in 2024 when the ShotSpotter contract was renewed that year — found that only a quarter of ShotSpotter alerts, when not in conjunction with a 911 call, could be linked to confirmed gunfire.
Wilson Center researchers were unable to provide specific data points around false reports of shots fired, the effect on crimes including homicides, and the technology’s effect on police response. Fayetteville City Council members voted 8-2 on Sept. 2 to accept the evaluation, with council members who voted against the measure — Benavente and Hondros — citing questions about the effectiveness of the technology.
The measure to renew the contract was met with discussion from both city council members and community members, with more than five residents speaking out against the use of the system at Monday’s meeting. No residents spoke in favor of renewing ShotSpotter.
Most of the discussion among council members aimed to clarify some data that was presented in the independent evaluation.
Benavente posed additional questions of the system’s efficacy.
“We don’t get to assume, without evidence, that something is true,” Benavente said, referring to the study’s conclusion that only 24% of Shotspotter alerts were linked to confirmed gunfire. “You have to build a case and present evidence. It’s surprising to me that right now we are saying, without evidence, we’re assuming that a loud noise is in fact gunfire.”
At an earlier meeting, Hondros — the other vote against the contract renewal — expressed hesitancy about continuing using ShotSpotter. At the time, he said he would support a month-to-month contract pending additional data on the system’s efficacy.
Fayetteville Police Chief Roberto Bryan spoke in favor of the technology. He said ShotSpotter allows FPD officers to proactively prepare for a situation where gunfire may be present.
“I want to be able to ensure that our officers are aware of what they’re getting into,” Bryan said. “And when we have a ShotSpotter, the technology, with a 911 call, that gives us the ability to approach a location or scene with the understanding that there’s a possible gunfire that took place in that area.”
Council Member Courtney Banks-McLaughlin supported the renewal of ShotSpotter, saying that the military uses similar technology.
“If it’s great enough for our military to use it, it is also great enough for our community to use this very technology,” Banks-McLaughlin said.
After the motion to extend the contract had been approved, Benavente introduced a motion that would task the city manager with calculating data that is collected from ShotSpotter in Fayetteville. Benavente told CityView that currently the city only codes incidents where evidence of gunfire is present, but does not code incidents where no evidence was found or where the evidence is inconclusive.
This motion passed in a 9-1 vote. Council Member Malik Davis was the only vote against the motion.
Council Member Lynne Greene said she wants to review ShotSpotter data that will be collected over the next year, saying that public safety is a number-one priority.
Greene said that she has not been a “huge proponent” of the system since its inception, but that she would support its renewal for another term given that the data is accessible.
“We just want to make sure that the outcome of that data,” Green said “we are able to interpret that data correctly. So, that is my biggest concern.”
