Boston police expand use of gunshot technology

Over the past year, Boston police have added a new dimension to the gunshot-location technology known as Shotspotter: the ability to identify individuals wearing court-ordered GPS trackers.

Shotspotter, a commercial product that Boston acquired in 2007, allows police to identify the location from which shots have been fired, enabling officers to reach the site of a shooting an average of two minutes sooner than they would otherwise, according to Paul Fitzgerald, the Boston police superintendent who oversees the project.

Over the past 15 months, the role of Shotspotter in Boston has expanded to identify parolees or probationers wearing GPS trackers in the vicinity of gunshots. The information, Fitzgerald said, can be useful in a variety of ways, beyond identifying or exonerating potential suspects.

“It’s a great investigation tool for identifying someone who might be a witness,” Fitzgerald said.

If a victim of a shooting is wearing a GPS tracker, police may be able to reach the person more rapidly, he added.

According to the Massachusetts Office of the Probation Commissioner, there are more than 1,800 probationers and parolees in Boston wearing the court-ordered trackers.

Until now, staff at the police department’s intelligence center have cross-checked information about gunshots and the location of probationers manually. The next step, according to Fitzgerald, is to automate the process so that information can be relayed more quickly to investigators.