Fort Worth has gunshot detectors in 5 neighborhoods. Are they working?
The Fort Worth Police Department has invested heavily in surveillance technology over the past five years, adding license plate readers throughout the city, as well as a number of gunshot detection systems. But do those detection systems actually have an impact on gun crime?
Deputy Police Chief Mark Barthen provided data to the City Council on Dec. 2 that called into question their efficacy from a prevention and response standpoint.
As of October, the department has detection systems in five square-mile areas where gunfire is a problem: Northwest 25th Street, Las Vegas Trail, the Rosemont neighborhood, the area where South Riverside Drive meets Berry Street and the area where Stalcup Road meets Berry Street.
Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 16, those systems detected more than 6,000 instances of gunfire, which includes the times when multiple shots were fired at the same location at the same time.
These detection alerts, however, resulted in only 22 police service calls. Barthen said no citations were issued as a result of the detections, and very few detections actually led to arrests.
Barthen added that, in most cases, when electronic systems pick up gunshots, those shots have already been reported to 9-1-1 by residents.
The detections have been helpful, Barthen said, in assisting detectives with investigations, though, enabling them to better pinpoint when and where gunshots occurred.
When speaking to the council, Barthen was joined by Police Chief Eddie Garcia, who admitted the department would evaluate whether it would continue to employ gunshot detection systems.
“We need to figure out if this technology is worth it,” Garcia said. He added that a major hurdle is that many gunshots in the city originate in people’s backyards, where they’re just firing guns for the fun of it, not in the commission of a crime.
Currently, the city uses Flock and Acoem gunshot detection systems. The Star-Telegram was unable to immediately locate the city’s contract with Acoem, but Fort Worth pays Flock more than $600,000 a year to maintain and monitor its gunshot detection systems and license plate readers.
The Flock detection systems were installed in 2023. Under the city’s agreement with Flock, monitoring and maintenance cost $70,000 a year for the first two years, but that will increase to $175,000 a year going forward should the police department decide to keep the technology in place.