ROCHESTER, N.Y. – ShotSpotter is a network of sensors spread around parts of the City of Rochester that detect loud, spontaneous sounds. This weekend, there are sure to be a lot of those.

“Unfortunately, some people will still be using guns,” said Tim Chittum, VP of Forensic Services at Sound Thinking/ShotSpotter. “When we detect gunfire, we don’t know if it’s homicidal or celebratory but that doesn’t make any difference to us, we detect it, we locate it and we send it to the police so they can respond and investigate.”

News10NBC Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke asked how ShotSpotter knows the difference between gunfire and fireworks.

“We have trained reviewers that look at lots of different points of data, listen to multiple recordings of the incident before we publish it to our customers, the police,” Chittum said.

Lewke noted that RPD told her years ago, they used to turn ShotSpotter off on the Fourth of July but the technology had gotten better, so they don’t have to do that anymore.

“Like all technology, we continue to improve,” Chittum responded. “We also have a lot of experience in dealing with things like the high volume that we see on the Fourth of July. So, while many people will be out celebrating the independence of our nation, it will be all hands on deck at Sound Thinking.”

Those employees will be monitoring the waveforms of the sounds and the direction in which they are captured by the sensors. That helps to differentiate between an actual gunshot and a firework in the air.

“We’re already hard at work, the Fourth of July is really game day for us,” Chittum said.

It’s ShotSpotter employees who first monitor for shots here in Rochester. Typically, it takes about a minute for them to decipher whether they believe it’s gunfire and relay that to Rochester Police. Rochester Police take it from there.

The Fourth of July is the busiest week of the year for the folks at ShotSpotter. No one gets the holiday off, or New Year’s Eve. The police department also beefs up staffing around the fourth. But fireworks are very popular across the city for most of the summer, so it’s good to know how they differentiate.

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