Cleveland safety director extends ShotSpotter software contract for one year; council demands data and oversight

Cleveland's Department of Public Safety told the City Council's Public Safety Committee on April 22 that it used a board-of-control procedure to extend the city's gunshot-detection software contract for one year at a cost of $853,340.

Director Drummond said the city first deployed the acoustic detection technology as a 3-square-mile pilot that later expanded to about 13 square miles, and that the one-year extension was intended as a stopgap to avoid lapses in coverage while the administration runs a competitive request for proposals. "We did not want to have no coverage whatsoever," Drummond said, adding that alerts can reach dispatchers and zone officers within about a minute and have in several cases led officers to victims and to evidence that aided investigations.

Council members pushed for more data and for clearer oversight. Several members said a prior academic report presented to council found the technology aided evidence-gathering but could not establish that it reduced criminal activity, and they questioned why the administration used section 181.102 of the codified ordinances and the board of control rather than seeking full council approval for a recurring contract of this size.

Assistant Director Jason Schachner and Drummond told the committee the extension was processed under the ordinance's software-contract provision and that the law department and board of control have been used previously for similar software renewals. Schachner said an RFP is being prepared; if a different vendor emerges from a competitive process, that new contract will go through the standard legislative path.

Members asked for specific follow-up materials: a map of the ShotSpotter/Sound Thinking coverage area, the budget and funding source for the $853,340 extension, the original contract figures (cited in the meeting as $2,758,500), and incident-level examples and performance metrics (including the city's request for counts of false positives and comparison response times). Schachner and Drummond agreed to provide the data and to arrange for vendor representatives to appear at a future meeting.

The committee did not vote on legislation at the session. Chair requested that the council and administration discuss possible amendments to section 181.102 to clarify thresholds and legislative oversight for high-dollar recurring contracts going forward.