SoundThinking, Maker of ShotSpotter, Is Buying Parts of PredPol Creator Geolitica

SoundThinking, the company behind the gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter, is quietly acquiring staff, patents, and customers of the firm that created the notorious predictive policing software PredPol, WIRED has learned...

In an August earnings call, SoundThinking CEO Ralph Clark announced to investors that the company was negotiating an agreement to acquire parts of Geoliticaformerly called PredPoland transition its customers to SoundThinkings own patrol management solution...

And while SoundThinking has rebranded predictive policing as resource management for police departments, a WIRED analysis of one of the companys apps found that crime-forecasting technology remains one of its key offerings...

For years, critics and academics have argued that since the PredPol algorithm relies on historical and unreliable crime data, it reproduces and reinforces biased policing patterns..

In 2021, the MacArthur Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law analyzed records kept by Chicagos Office of Emergency Management and Communications over a two-year period and found that 89 percent of ShotSpotter alerts in the city did not lead to police finding evidence of a gun-related crime..

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