SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) – A system to detect and identify gunshots in real time is being tested in Springfield.
The area where gunshots are reported the most is from Kearney Street and Glenstone Avenue to Kearney and West Bypass, then south to West Bypass and Sunshine Street, and over to Sunshine and Glenstone.
Deshaun and D’Liyah Hempstead live near the Raven System.
“I think it’s better actually, in my personal opinion, everybody has their own personal presence and option, but that is just mine,” says Deshaun.
Anything to make a neighborhood safer is a positive.
“Me personally, I think it is a good idea because, most of us, or a lot of us have children that we can’t even allow to walk the streets sometimes or even, go to the park without people feeling like its ok to pull a firearm and shoot. So, I actually feel like that is an amazing idea,” says D’Liyah Hempstead.
They have seen first-hand what gun violence can do.
“There has been a lot of shootings and a lot of violence or gun violence. I lost my brother to gun violence, so it’s hard,” says Deshaun Hempstead.
Hearing about a pilot program by the Springfield Police Department is a positive for them.
“They have to do something also to keep the crime rate down, it’s been rising, gun violence it has been going up,” says Deshaun Hempstead.
Springfield Police have installed 56 devices that use audio detection sensors that are designed to detect and identify the sound of gunfire in real time which should allow officers to respond more quickly.
“What it does is, the sensors detect the gunshot and then triangulate where the gunshot came from,” says Captain Culley Wilson, with SPD.
The devices have been installed in a zone identified as an area with reports of gunshots.
“There is a gun violence problem throughout the United States and Springfield too. We have to many people out here shooting, firing off weapons needlessly at night, at each other for no reason and we want that number to go down,” says Wilson.
According to data from the Springfield Police, the department had 338 shots fired calls in 2020, 295 in 2021, 356 in 2022, and 317 in 2023.
“So, this is us, the police department, and the city looking at technology to see if this is going to help us fight this in the future will it bring it down,” says Wilson.
Right now, the city is testing the system at no cost to see if it works for 90 days in one square mile of the city. If the testing is effective…then the department will have to decide if they want to go before city council to buy it.
“$30,000 is a lot of money for that, we will evaluate it, the Chief of Police, the majors, myself, the captains, and throughout the department will evaluate this to see is it worth what we are getting,” says Wilson.
The department says this could be a valuable tool in the department’s long-term strategy to reduce crimes where guns are involved.
“It gives us that possible location, that gunshot, within 60 seconds. And that is what Flock says, given us that information within sixty seconds of where it is happening. So, it is going to increase our response time,” says Wilson.
For the Hempstead’s, “You shouldn’t feel no type of way about it. If you got nothing‚” says D’Liyah Hempstead.
Cameras are a part of life.
“Everyone goes in public every day being recorded or not,” says Deshaun Hempstead.
They think if this system was around, things might have been different for their brother.
“For sure, it definitely would have‚” says D’Liyah Hempstead.
The Raven system started going up a couple of weeks ago and was just recently activated to start the 90-day trial. Back in 2021, the city council voted down paying for a similar system from a different company.
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