CLEVELAND, Ohio — The City of Cleveland renewed its Shotspotter contract for another year without having to go through city council.
The previous contract was set to expire this month.
On Wednesday, the Cleveland Board of Control approved extending the Shotspotter contract for another year at a cost of just over $850,000.
Members of Mayor Justin Bibb’s cabinet make up the Board of Control, including Public Safety Director Wayne Drummond.
Shotspotter devices are placed throughout the city to detect gunfire and alert police.
News 5 Investigators have been following this process.
Late last year, the city said they didn’t plan to renew its Shotspotter contract.
They wanted to push an emergency proposal through council to move forward with expanding Flock without giving other companies a chance to bid.
During a safety committee meeting, the city discussed Flock’s capabilities to also detect gunfire, street takeovers and crashes.
The city already uses Flock for license plate readers, and that Flock contract runs out in June.
Before the year ended, Safety Committee Chair Mike Polensek says the administration requested that the Flock expansion plan be shelved.
The city said during initial talks, community members raised valid questions about the federal government’s access to Flock.
Last month, the grassroots group Flock No said they want the city to remove Flock from city streets and not renew its contract this summer.
RELATED: Grassroots group presses Cleveland to end relationship with Flock Safety, expansion plans on hold
They released the following statement about the decision:
"Flock No condemns the City of Cleveland’s decision to renew its ShotSpotter contract for another year via a Board of Control resolution. Independent research from CSU shows that this technology has not reduced crime in Cleveland and has, in fact, adversely affected emergency response times. And yet, despite explicitly stating their intention to stop using ShotSpotter last year, the Administration is now once again allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars to a tool that will not make us safer.
That this decision was backchanneled through an appointed body with no direct accountability to residents further highlights the Administration’s utter disregard for public concerns regarding surveillance in our city. The Board of Control provided no notice of this action and did not publish the meeting agenda until after it occurred. Given that the Mayor is already facing an active recall campaign rooted in a lack of transparency and questionable spending, one would expect the Administration to be urgently focused on rebuilding public trust. Instead, they’ve done the exact opposite.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether the vendor is Flock Safety, SoundThinking, or another competitor: surveillance technology is a waste of resources and a bad deal for Clevelanders. The research is clear – gun violence is most effectively addressed through a public health approach that invests in root causes, not expensive, unproven software tools. We call on the Administration to cancel its contracts with both ShotSpotter and Flock, remove all sensors and ALPRs from our streets, and redirect those resources toward real community needs."
