Wichita police begin using gunshot sensors after testing them for years

Wichita police officers now have access to the gunshot detection technology the department has been testing since February 2022.

Police said that they found that 83% of gunshots in testing areas were never reported. The hope is that Flock Safety’s Raven gunshot sensors will catch those gunshots, ensuring police respond to any shots that are fired in the areas where the sensors are up.

“The Raven system is a key part of our broader effort to improve community safety. The system helps us respond faster and efficiently,” Chief Joe Sullivan said in a news release Friday, when officers started getting alerts for the gunshot sensors. “Real-time alerts improve officer awareness, especially in neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.”

Sullivan, who inherited the tested sensors when he was hired in November 2022, and his staff held town hall meetings in each City Council district last year to discuss the department’s new and coming technologies.

To help create transparency around a controversial technology, Sullivan said there would be a dashboard where the public could see the alerts and outcomes.

“We want you to see and we want to see, is it working, is it not working?” Sullivan said during the June 8, 2024, meeting in District 1.

Police spokesperson Andrew Ford said Saturday that the “dashboard is in progress.”

The technology was tested for years with barely any public mention of it. Elected officials learned the department was using it when the testing was mentioned during a discussion of the failures of a previous gunshot system in February 2023.

Sullivan has previously said that not reporting the testing of the technology was a “glitch in communication” by the previous administration.

Where will gunshot sensors be located?

Police have put the sensors in areas with high reports of gun violence. Police have said they would only say general areas, not specifics, because of concerns about the sensors being stolen or vandalized.

The Eagle reported in October 2024, when the City Council approved buying the sensors, that the department had been testing 144 gunshot sensors in two square miles in council districts 1 and 3. The department planned at the time to add more sensors to cover two more square miles that would include coverage in District 6.

Opponents of the technology say it could lead to overpolicing certain areas and using the technology to make stops and arrests. In addition, there are concerns about a similar system, ShotSpotter, being able to record voices, according to The Standard-Times in Massachusetts and CBS News.

Flock regularly updates its technology to catch sounds of things other than gunshots, like glass breaking, wheels screeching and saws for catalytic converter thefts. The screeching tires were added to Wichita’s sensors during testing, a Flock representative previously told The Wichita Eagle.

Reports from officials in New York and Chicago have found that ShotSpotter more often than not made false alerts.

Early in his tenure, Sullivan said the Raven gunshot sensors were not working to a degree that the department would adopt them. He later said the upgrades to the sensors had greatly improved their efficacy.

Wichita police are familiar with Flock Safety, founded in 2017, after testing its license plate readers in 2020 and then adopting them throughout the city. The license plate readers can record vehicle types and license plates and alert police when they capture a potential suspect’s vehicle.