City of Mansfield Division of Police Gun-shot Detection Program

With the COVID-19 Pandemic still a threat to our nation’s health and still impacting our local community, we need to find ways to help positively impact the rising violent gun crimes while maintaining safe protocols. The most likely place to turn is within the technology sector to look for ways to provide not only active enforcement but investigatory assistance to limit person-to-person contacts during the Pandemic. The Mansfield Division of Police is proposing an effort to focus on the collection of data to help positively impact firearm related offenses and violence within our city by providing quicker responses to gun-related crimes by utilizing gunshot detection technology to get gun crime data immediately to our street officers. With overall, gun-related crimes up nearly 40% in 2021 as compared to 2019, this project is desperately needed. 

It is the goal of the Division to be able to renew the Shotspotter gunshot detection system within this grant period of 36 months, after the current funded subscription expires. Already, this technology has increased officer response times to gun violence within our city and has provided investigators with better information concerning these crimes by tracking sequence and movement of those firing the shots, which helps in apprehension and investigations. It is, also, the goal of the Mansfield Division of Police to reduce overall gun-related crimes by 10% as well as “Shots fired into a Habitation” by 15% as compared to 2021. By continuing Shotspotter use, we will be able to better identify those neighborhood and areas of the city that are problematic for gun-related crimes and use data to reduce those incidents and to direct targeted patrol during high gun-related time frames as identified by the Division’s Crime Analyst using Shotspotter technology and reporting.