Shotspotter, Plainfield: Another Cargo Cult Rears its Ugly Head.

Unless Plainfield has become Afghanistan and you can immediately and indiscriminately launch a retaliatory attack into the location where the shots were fired, Shotspotter will not work. The science is not there. Yes, we should have cameras located in high crime areas and provide access to them in real time for all the police and citizens to view.

I don't know who is pelding this Kool Aide but I spent my entire career in technology and can tell you the devil is in the details, see my Sept.29, 2010, blog post. But then again, my advice is free, so it must not be worth anything. It is always interesting to note that those of us who know technology look at it with a jaundice eye and while those who don’t, like ‘Cargo Cultist,’ rush to embrace it as if it were manna from heaven.

The Council and the Administration would do well to read the article in the August edition of Scientific American, ‘How New York Beat Crime.’

Yeah I know  a $250,000 grant is a lot to let slip by, but  if only Shotspotter qualifies for the grant then you have to ask yourself who is being paid off and maybe for once Plainfield should take the high road and walk? 

ShotSpotter: My Comments, Green fails at verbal Gundown of Storch

Councilman Storch, I think your analysis of the issues surrounding the Shotspotter (see here) proposal was spot on. 

Now I have one quibble with the administration and the council and that is that the devil is in the details. I have been in technology for over 40 years and have seen many systems go down the tubes and it happens for several reasons:

1. 
   
   
   The vendor over promises and under-delivers.
   
2. The people making the decision don't have the technical expertise.
   
3. The vendor provides only anecdotal evidence and no verifiable hard scientific facts to verify the performance claims of their solution.
   
4. Positive references provided by the vendor were paid for.
   
5. Lack of customer expertise to administer the system after the vendor leaves.
   
6. Lack of buy-in from the people using the system, even if they have the expertise.
   
7. Lack of buy-in from the stakeholders. In this case the community that is to be the supposed beneficiary of the solution..
   
8. Lack of written and monitoring of performance guarantees from the people charted with administering the system. Example, can you guarantee the arrival of a Police car within 3 minutes of the shots being fired?

Now even if you get all of these things done, it just gets you to the point of having a functional system.

The next phase should be a go/no-go pilot to verify that the solution can actually meet the promised deliverables (in this case a reduction in crime the justifies the cost of the project). If it's a go, there should be a phased implementation. If it's a no-go, can adjustments be made to improve the pilot?

If yes, implement the improvements, restart the pilot and go through the cycle again. If no, close the project down and get your money back. Better still hold the monies in an escrow account and if no-go take your money out and close the account. If a go, pay them in stages with the final payment going to them six months after the successful completion of the project.

YouTube - Videos from this email