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sperra
@sperra

Here's what it looks like in Chicago (my city)— and it's as though some CEO with a vague idea of Chicago just asked, "Where do most Black and Latino people live?" and fucking redlined every sensor to be in those neighborhoods. You can see the damn cutoff lines for christ sakes. Fucking unreal. (I quickly sketched the city boundary in blue here— so it's only roughly accurate, but my starter job was literally as a cartographer for the city, so I've drawn this 1000 times and I think I got pretty darn close here.)

If you're not familiar with ShotSpotter, they're a "safety" "service" that puts microphones in neighborhoods to detect and triangulate gunshot noises. They then send alerts to the police so they can go... idk, respond, or do whatever the hell it is police do. For many years activists have been saying that ShotSpotter is heavily biased and perpetuates racial profiling and policing, and this leak is the most concrete confirmation you could ask for. Ironically, ShotSpotter wouldn't even share their sensor locations with the police departments they partnered with— because even most fucking police officers would raise their eyebrows at a map like this! THAT'S how blatantly evil they are!!

In the very small column of things Mayor Brandon Johnson has actually gotten done since election last spring, he did announce just last week that Chicago would be cancelling it's contract with ShotSpotter. The full decommission isn't happening until late September, however.


kyn
@kyn

hey the fact that this exists in the first place is horrifying


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in reply to @nora's post:

in reply to @sperra's post:

jesus christ that's much more blatant than I expected

like I knew it was going to be heavily skewed towards the south side but they didn't even try to pretend they weren't racist fucks

Anyway this is the second time Brandon Johnson said he'd cancel the contract and then gave ShotSpotter more money anyway so I'm not super hopeful for September