High-Tech ‘Ears’ Listen for Shots
Cara Buckley for the New York Times:
BANG! The shot rang out after midnight, sending revelers who had spilled from a house party screaming and running down a scrappy Long Island street. Four miles away, in a concrete bunker 25 feet below ground, an emergency dispatcher jumped at the sound, and homed in on its source.
Within moments, a police car, its siren wailing, was racing to the scene, in the heart of Uniondale. A second shot went off. Four men were arrested as they tried to speed away. The officers also found two guns, both illegal, their muzzles still warm. No one had been hit.
The dispatcher had heard and mapped the shots using ShotSpotter, a gunshot tracking system that has been adopted so far by 45 cities, universities and government sites — giving its operators near-bionic listening powers, often in troubled places.
In recent months, ShotSpotter has been deployed in pockets of…
