Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has quietly signed off on another year of Cleveland’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection service, approving a fresh round of licenses and maintenance without putting the contract in front of City Council. The move keeps the acoustic sensor network, which covers roughly 13 square miles of the city, up and running and the vendor relationship intact for now. Council members and public safety watchdogs said they only found out about the renewal after the Board of Control approved it.
Board of Control signs off
At its April 8 meeting, the Board of Control took up a public safety item that “fixes compensation” for a prospective contract with SoundThinking, the company formerly known as ShotSpotter, setting the amount at $853,340 for annual maintenance and licenses, according to the Board of Control agenda. The agenda describes the purchase as for “acoustic gunshot detection and alerting solutions” and lists it under the Public Safety department.
What the law allows
City officials say they did not need a council vote because Cleveland’s municipal code already lets department heads extend certain software agreements once a system has been approved. Section 181.102 authorizes a department director or the Director of Finance to enter into license, maintenance and technical support contracts, and instructs the Board of Control to set the compensation for those purchases, according to city code §181.102.
Council reaction
Council Safety Committee Chair Michael Polensek argued that elected officials should have had a chance to review the renewal before it went through. “We’ve got to watch this bunch like the hawk,” he told a local reporter, criticizing the administration’s decision to run the agreement through the Board of Control rather than seek a formal vote. The administration’s public safety office told reporters that directors are allowed to renew software agreements by Board resolution and that it will keep weighing its options for gunshot detection tools, Signal Cleveland reported.
What the independent review found
A city-funded, 185-page analysis by Cleveland State University concluded that ShotSpotter is generally reliable at flagging when and where gunfire happens and can speed up police responses in some situations. The same review also found that most alerts did not lead officers to victims, witnesses or usable evidence, and that ShotSpotter calls increased the number of top priority dispatches. Those findings, along with the report’s warning that extra high-priority calls can strain an already understaffed police force, are detailed by Cleveland State University.
Where this leaves the city
The renewal keeps ShotSpotter active while the Bibb administration looks at alternatives, including technology offered by Flock Safety. The city had previously signaled interest in switching vendors, then hit pause amid council debate. The mixed results from the Cleveland State study, combined with the decision to rely on a Board resolution instead of an explicit council vote, have intensified calls from some council members and community groups for an open request for proposals and hard metrics that link alerts to arrests, evidence and medical outcomes, a debate summarized in coverage of the report.
What to watch next
Council members could answer with legislation or by pushing harder for a formal RFP process and stronger tracking of what ShotSpotter alerts actually deliver. Activists and residents are still demanding more transparency about where sensors are placed and what comes out of the increased police responses. For now, the Board of Control’s approval keeps the ShotSpotter system funded and online while Cleveland’s broader fight over cost, staffing and the place of gunshot detection technology in local policing continues.
