City Council members, researchers and public safety experts are turning up the heat on the NYPD, pressing the department to publish New York City's full record of "shots-fired" incidents, including alerts where no one is hit. Right now the NYPD's public stats focus on shooting incidents where someone is struck, a narrow slice that critics say understates how often guns are actually going off and how often residents feel under threat. Advocates argue that releasing every ShotSpotter alert, 911 gunfire report and officer-generated shots-fired entry would let independent analysts map near misses, track response times and test whether policing strategies are reducing real harm. The NYPD maintains that its published shooting-victim figures are the most reliable snapshot of gun violence, but the transparency fight has clearly drawn in city lawmakers and data watchdogs.
Officials and experts push for full 'shots-fired' data
According to the New York Daily News, Public Safety Committee Chair Oswald Feliz and Councilmember Justin Sanchez have joined forces with researchers to urge the NYPD to publish case-level shots-fired records so residents and analysts can see where gunfire, not just injuries, is happening. The paper quotes experts who say unconfirmed alerts and other near-miss incidents still shape how safe people feel in their own neighborhoods. Dr. Jordan DeVylder told the Daily News that those incidents "cause fear and anxiety" for residents, while Dr. John Eterno called for maximum transparency. Council members say public access to the full dataset would let communities hold officials accountable for both public safety outcomes and the cost of the technology used to detect gunfire.
NYPD says its shooting statistics are the clearest picture
The department has pushed back, arguing that the datasets it currently publishes, which center on shooting incidents where at least one person is struck, provide the clearest and most complete picture of gun violence in the city. In a March press release the NYPD highlighted record lows in shooting victims and other categories this year and emphasized that its statistics are preliminary but curated to reflect confirmed incidents, according to the NYPD. Department officials and some advocates say that if every acoustic alert and unconfirmed report were added to public databases, the result could be a noisy set of numbers that is harder to verify and might mislead the public if not carefully labeled.
Comptroller audit flagged limits of ShotSpotter alerts
Advocates point to a June 2024 audit by the NYC Comptroller, which found that in the months sampled, only a minority of ShotSpotter alerts were ultimately linked to confirmed shootings and that many alerts were unconfirmed or unfounded. The auditors recommended publishing more of the underlying data so outside researchers could measure the system's accuracy, the officer time spent responding and whether the alerts improved outcomes such as evidence recovery or arrests. That analysis has bolstered calls from academics and community groups for more granular, shareable records on when and where the technology is activated.
Data already exists, opening it would let researchers test police claims
ShotSpotter alerts and call-for-service records are already posted through the city's data portal, and the Comptroller used those public datasets for parts of its review, according to NYC Open Data and the audit. Researchers say that publishing time-stamped, case-level shots-fired entries, with clear flags for confirmed, unconfirmed and unfounded dispositions, would let outside teams compare response times, measure duplicative deployments and spot patterns of repeated policing on particular blocks. The Comptroller specifically noted that the department can already match some of these data points, but that doing so is laborious without consistently published raw records.
Bronx cases show why 'near misses' matter
Bronx incidents have become Exhibit A in the argument over what counts as gun violence. Investigators recovered 18 shell casings at an April 15 scene in the borough where windows and a vehicle were damaged but no one was struck, and on May 7 the NYPD released surveillance photos of five men wanted in connection with a separate Prospect Avenue shots-fired episode, as reported by the New York Daily News. Proponents say those kinds of events, which do not always show up in victim counts, are still traumatic for neighbors and can highlight persistent hot spots that might call for non-policing interventions as well as enforcement. Elected leaders in the Bronx, where several contested alerts have occurred, argue that residents deserve a fuller public record so they can better weigh their options.
What happens next
Public Safety Committee Chair Oswald Feliz, who represents a large swath of the Bronx and leads the council panel that could press for changes, has framed the request as a basic matter of public accountability and oversight, according to his City Council biography and committee role on the council website. The NYPD and city officials now have to decide whether to publish expanded, case-level shots-fired data or to create a vetted release format that tries to balance transparency with investigative and privacy concerns. Either route would reshape how researchers, journalists and residents measure gunfire in New York City. For now, the dispute sets up a policy fight that will test whether greater openness about near-miss incidents can shift policing strategies or public health responses in the neighborhoods that hear gunfire most often.
