ShotSpotter Technology with Thomas Chittum of SoundThinking Inc.

[Shaun]: 0:02

You know, Scott, today I was looking at some things we've had, you know, my agency, there's unfortunately quite a few officers over time that have, you know, made the ultimate sacrifice. And one of the things that I found interesting was the way that they communicated with each other when they were dealing with an incident. There was one officer that was killed here in this agency right after the Civil War was over.

[Scott]: 0:23

Mm-hmm.

[Shaun]: 0:23

And he was shot by, unfortunately, a Union soldier while he was doing his job because they were, I imagine the soldiers were out of control. you know, serving in war and drinking and everything else and occupying. And, uh, one of the things that I found was really wild was that the way, now that I'm working here, this is an old city that the way they used to communicate with each other when they were in trouble, imagine this before radios and data and technology like we have was they would wrap their night sticks on the sidewalk, like literally wrap them on the curb as loud as they could. So other officers in the area, when they heard that distinct sound, they would

[Scott]: 0:58

Really?

[Shaun]: 0:58

come running to the location. I mean, comms are not always ideal, but could you imagine dealing that is what you're waiting for? You're surrounded

[Scott]: 1:06

Right.

[Shaun]: 1:06

by like five drunk

[Scott]: 1:07

Like, like,

[Shaun]: 1:08

Union soldiers.

[Scott]: 1:08

wait a second. Was that two taps or three

[Shaun]: 1:11

Right,

[Scott]: 1:11

taps

[Shaun]: 1:11

right,

[Scott]: 1:11

that

[Shaun]: 1:11

right. Yeah.

[Scott]: 1:12

two

[Shaun]: 1:12

Knock

[Scott]: 1:12

is

[Shaun]: 1:12

three times on the scenes if you want me, you know, kind of thing. And it was sad because the officer unfortunately lost his life. And I just think like, you know, how... compressed of a time frame we live in with the way technology has progressed in the last 150 years and the things that we

[Scott]: 1:27

Mm-hmm.

[Shaun]: 1:27

have available to us to make our things better It's just like everything else right now. Our life is so complex. Our slave has so much technology It seems like maybe we lose sight of being able to properly use this stuff to have all this stuff communicate together That's kind of what the show is about today. I know from my personal experience one of the things that I found When we're working and Scott you can kind of correct me from wrong because you've been on a lot of ops as well as that communications is so effective that sometimes it's overwhelming too. Like the radio is so active during a critical incident that you can't make rhyme or reason of to what's going on. And I just thought, hey, let's get some folks out here. Other than we just complaining about the things that suck about technology and things that don't work for us to give us some tangible solutions, some things that you hear about in the media, you hear about in the news, you see how it was related to our work was as well as folks fighting overseas and doing the things that they were doing, particularly during Iraq and in Afghanistan.

[Scott]: 2:20

Well, and how much it's changed just in our timeframe of working,

[Shaun]: 2:23

Right, absolutely,

[Scott]: 2:23

you know, 23

[Shaun]: 2:24

right,

[Scott]: 2:25

ish years, you know, I

[Shaun]: 2:26

right.

[Scott]: 2:26

mean, look at it's changed significantly just in our little window of time, which, you know, when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, it's like, man, what's this going to be, what's this profession going to be like in another 20 years

[Shaun]: 2:38

You

[Scott]: 2:38

with

[Shaun]: 2:38

know, we

[Scott]: 2:38

some

[Shaun]: 2:38

started

[Scott]: 2:38

of these

[Shaun]: 2:38

out

[Scott]: 2:38

changes? So.

[Shaun]: 2:39

with radios that actually, like you had to pull them off your hip and talk into them while you were engaging

[Scott]: 2:43

Right

[Shaun]: 2:43

in a gunfight with a, basically a failed weapons platform of a pistol. You know what I mean? Now I gotta go to one end, is what I can communicate. And you still see some guys doing that stuff. But today we wanted to talk with somebody that had some real solutions and some real experience and some real passion about it. So our guest today is a... Senior Vice President of Analytics for Forensics Services at Sound Thinking. He's going to talk a little bit about that company here in a minute. His team supports the effective application of products in investigations, forensics, and litigations. He has 27 years of federal law enforcement experience, and he was formerly the Chief Operating Officer of the ATF. So our guest is Tom Chidham. Tom, we can't thank you enough for being here today.

[Scott]: 3:24

Welcome,

[Shaun]: 3:24

And

[Scott]: 3:25

welcome, welcome.

[Shaun]: 3:25

we wanted to give you an opportunity to celebrate some of the good things that you're doing because- It's this great thing out there, this mythological thing that a lot of people think they know about and they really don't. And I think how effective it really is needs to be shared with our public. So can we start out with a little bit about your background and then we'll kind of get into, you know, gun violence, the things that we need to do to kind of address that stuff, because that's what we're talking about. And then how we use some technology and data to support it.

[Tom]: 3:51

Yeah, well, first of all, I appreciate you guys having me on today. This is a topic that I'm passionate about. Some of the things that you described about people not really understanding how a shot spotter works or how it can be used. I understand well, because I was in their shoes once. And so any opportunity I have to talk to people about it, I like doing it. First of all, I like to explain all the good things that it can be used for, but also to correct a lot of misunderstandings and there's plenty of that.

[Shaun]: 4:23

Oh yeah.

[Tom]: 4:25

So let me tell you a little bit about myself. As long as I ever wanted to be anything, I wanted to be a fed. And I thought that meant I wanted to be an FBI agent,

[Shaun]: 4:37

Right.

[Tom]: 4:37

but what did I know? I was just a dumb kid. And my dad, he always said, I always thought the B-A-T-F went after the worst criminals. He pronounced the B, which I would come to know was like fingernails on a chalkboard to real ATF agents. But I remember that as a kid. And one day I had the opportunity. I met a guy, he was the local supervisor of the ATF office in West Virginia. I was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. And he said, you should apply and come to work for us. And so I did. And I became an ATF agent in the late 90s. I started out as a Plano agent, working cases in the street, first in Miami, Florida. And but then I worked in a lot of other places. I got a lot of promotions. I rose through the ranks at the agency. I was a lot of different supervisory positions in the field. I ran ATF Special Operations Division, its internal affairs, and a few other things. And eventually when I retired, I was the number two in charge of the agency, the acting deputy director, as you pointed out at the beginning, the chief operating.

[Shaun]: 5:54

Question about West Virginia real quick and I don't mean to be smart ass, but is it like West Virginia the reason we have an ATF?

[Tom]: 6:00

Well, it's funny. So I tell people, look, one of the best things about being that high ranking in the agency was that I got to travel all over the country and represent the men and women of ATF to lots of diverse audiences. And inevitably when I did that, people would ask about my accent. And I would say, well, like for those of you not schooled in the ways of Appalachia, this is pure West Virginian. And I would always hear the snickering and I said, but here's the thing. From a very early age in life, I already had lots of experience with alcohol, tobacco and firearms. So ACF was a natural fit for me.

[Shaun]: 6:40

I think Hatfield McCoy's down there. You watch that and you're like, these people are damn crazy. Look at what

[Tom]: 6:44

Yeah.

[Shaun]: 6:44

they do down there. It took a lot of brave people to probably rise up out of that environment, just like anything else. It's like, hey, there are good people that come from all those environments. But I thought like, you know, there were moonshine and people that were willing to shoot each other or squabbles that had developed during the Civil War. It's a lot of history there. So it's interesting that you said that. So thanks for the clarification. Now, obviously gun violence is something that. I mean, it's a presidential issue at this point. People are talking about it. It's gotten obviously way worse in a lot of ways. And at times is it like, is it really that much worse or is it just something that's being pumped and sold to us? So if you could talk a little bit about that and your angles and what you're looking at with that and what we're looking at with that as a society.

[Tom]: 7:26

Yeah, well, a couple of things you said really resonated with me in your intro about how things have gotten so much better than they once were before. That's the nature of progress. It's the nature of human progress, but the progression of any profession. And I saw it at ATF too, right? Everybody would always grumble, oh, things, you know, they're not like they used to be. But I really do believe it's kind of the human condition. We... only see a slice in time. And sometimes it's very hard to hold all of history in your mind at one time, to keep in perspective and see that we really are progressing in a lot of ways. And things that seem unique to us today may not be. And here's an example. Tomorrow night, I'm giving a presentation on the history of gun law in America to an audience. And one of the slides I will use... is from an old publication. I talk about how gun violence seems like such a modern problem to us. It's in the news every single day.

[Scott]: 8:26

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 8:26

And this article was about the evils of handguns and how something has to be done. It was literally an article from 1881. And

[Shaun]: 8:38

Yeah.

[Tom]: 8:38

so this issue that feels like, wow, it is a today issue isn't

[Scott]: 8:42

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 8:42

really. And now there's always evolving issues, but this is something that we've had to deal with for a really long time. So I don't know if you saw my bio, but I'm also an adjunct law professor. I teach a course on firearms law and the second amendment.

[Scott]: 9:01

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 9:01

And I start the course out with some of the very earliest case law. Literally the first case that we discuss in my class is from 1822. and the courts weighing in on the evils of carrying concealed firearms. So it's pretty fascinating when you look at this. It's not as new as it sometimes feels like it is.

[Scott]: 9:25

Well,

[Shaun]: 9:25

Yeah,

[Scott]: 9:25

I feel

[Shaun]: 9:25

there

[Scott]: 9:25

like

[Shaun]: 9:25

you go.

[Scott]: 9:25

it gets sometimes that just that term gun violence, so many things get like that term gets used to encompass so many things. You know what I mean? I feel like sometimes you're just fitting it into that anything ever with a firearm. It's like gun violence. You know, you just, we use that phrase and I, and I think that there's, there's varying may not varying degrees of that, but you know what I mean? Like it's not just, it's not just. real simple black and white kind of thing, you know?

[Tom]: 9:55

Well, you're pointing out one of the most important things that first night in the class, I presented. So I started teaching it when I worked at ATF. As you can imagine, there were hurdles I had to jump through to teach a second amendment law class as an ATF executive.

[Shaun]: 10:11

All

[Tom]: 10:11

And

[Shaun]: 10:11

right.

[Scott]: 10:11

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 10:11

so I presented as viewpoint neutral, a viewpoint neutral examination of the history, constitutional doctrine and modern state of gun law in America. But I also teach it as viewpoint neutral or more correctly balanced because I think that's more academically honest. And I tell the students they are free to choose whatever side they want,

[Scott]: 10:34

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 10:35

as far to the left or the right as they want to be. Everyone should have guns, no one should have guns. But what they will find is that although much of the public discourse is dominated by absolutists at the extremes, What you find is there's a lot of gray area. And when you discuss it, honestly, I think it's more effective. And so to your point about gun violence being used as a broad label, the first thing I say is let's talk about some of the numbers that we're facing. Roughly every year, about 40,000 Americans die from gun-related deaths. But then you look behind those numbers and slightly more than half of them are suicides. A

[Shaun]: 11:26

Yeah.

[Tom]: 11:26

little less than half are homicides. And then a pretty small fraction of them are accidental. And I think the reason that it's important to point those things out is because they raise different policy questions. They have different potential interventions. And you really do, I think, have to be honest when you're talking about those things. You have to... to look behind sort of the headlines to the truth of these things. So I like spending a lot of time thinking about those things, talking about those things, and helping other people think through it themselves.

[Scott]: 12:02

Mm-hmm.

[Shaun]: 12:03

Do you feel that, obviously, there are certain sectors of society that maybe are impacted by gun violence a little bit more than, you know, maybe others? I mean, obviously, there's, like we talked about culturally, there are folks that value the gun and understand it. I heard Robert Kennedy talking about, like, I'm not going to take guns away from people. When I was a kid, I went to schools. And, you know, we know what kind of schools Robert Kennedy went to because he's part of the Illuminati, like I said. But he talked about how kids would bring rifles to school and things like that. It was a better understanding of it. And then there are now... some societies that maybe, I don't know if it's, I don't know if the right term to say is, it's a lack of understanding, but some folks are more negatively impacted by the situation with guns than others. Would you care to elaborate on that a little bit?

[Tom]: 12:44

Well, so it's funny that you say that. I remember in the prior administration, there was some news article that I read where somebody at the White House was quoted talking about the president. And they said, look, he didn't grow up in West Virginia where there's a gun in every room. And I thought, wow, stereotype much, but growing

[Shaun]: 13:04

Right,

[Tom]: 13:04

up

[Shaun]: 13:05

right.

[Tom]: 13:05

in a house where there was a gun in every room,

[Shaun]: 13:08

Hahaha

[Tom]: 13:08

when I think about guns, the first thing that comes to my mind is not, crime. I went to a school where everybody had guns for hunting and that sort of thing. So to your question, does it does it vary differently? Does it strike different communities differently? I think there's no two ways about it. The data is clear on that. And that probably has implications for the way that we have to address these things. You know, I don't think that there's any. secret that gun violence disproportionately affects certain communities, but even within those communities, it's restricted to a relatively small number of actors. And that hyperlocation focus, I think, has some implications for how we address it, how we are precise in deploying the resources, the tools that we have today.

[Scott]: 14:09

So how did you get involved in this, what you're doing now as you were coming out of ATF? Was it something that came on kind of right away or was it something that you were working on and thinking about? Obviously you were getting a lot of green stuff too, but when did you kind of get an idea to get involved in this?

[Tom]: 14:25

No, well, a friend of mine describes this job as a unicorn job because it so well matches with my history and my interests. So as I approached retirement, of course, I was looking for what I might do, putting my law degree to use, putting my experience to use. And so, As a high ranking person at ATF, I very often spoke publicly to the media, to the Department of Justice, other elected officials, police leaders, extolling the virtues of crime gun intelligence or CGI. It is basically the concept that drives ATF's strategy using the tools, the tactics, the techniques, the technology. that allows law enforcement to identify those relatively small number of people who are committing violent crimes and the firearms traffickers, the people that are arming them. So ATF depends on crime gun intelligence to do that. Information about recoveries, the technology that's literally revolutionizing how we investigate gun crimes, ballistic imaging, where you can take casings from one crime scene. using digital photographs of the markings left on that casing, enter it into a system, and it will match those markings to the casings from other crime scenes. So if you have one gun that was used to commit to otherwise seemingly unrelated crimes, those are connections that would have gone unrelated before, unconnected.

[Scott]: 16:17

Right, yeah, right.

[Tom]: 16:19

So I listened to one of your all's earlier shows a few weeks ago, where'd all the old cops go? I read that and I really liked it. I don't comment a lot on LinkedIn. I post a lot, but I'm not otherwise active on there. But I read her piece and so I put in a comment about it because as a wet behind the ears agent, I was assigned to an old homicide squad in Miami in my first office with ATF. Man, those guys taught me a lot.

[Scott]: 16:47

Right,

[Tom]: 16:48

But

[Scott]: 16:48

right.

[Tom]: 16:48

I remember how we investigated serial shooting cases back then. It was like, you know, we think they might be connected. Let's take them to a guy and see if he can match them. And seeing now how that is automated, how those connections will get made, even if you had no idea that they were related. It's very powerful. And then to use that same technology to, to match recovered firearms to crime scenes really helps. It's expanding the universe of leads investigators. have to go on and really opening that up. So anyways, I think that it's driving a lot of really incredible stuff. And I talked a lot about that. And I knew about ShotSpotter, getting to your question about how I ended up here. I knew about ShotSpotter, but I'll tell you, I really, I didn't know as much about it as I thought that I did. I

[Scott]: 17:40

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 17:41

only thought

[Shaun]: 17:41

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 17:41

about ShotSpotter as a pointer system. It tells cops where a gunfire occurred. And then that's it. It seems so obvious to me now in retrospect, but I really didn't give a lot of thought to how it ends up in the courtroom or how it can be used by investigators. And coming over here, the CEO approached me. He says, look, here's what we're doing. I did my research and I was blown away. As an aside, getting to the deputy director position at ATF, I got promoted a lot. And every single time I did, I would look back at my previous job and think, oh my God, there was so much stuff I didn't know. And I thought eventually I would stop having that experience. It would stop happening to me. Why I just kept having to confront how much I didn't know. Um,

[Scott]: 18:34

Right.

[Shaun]: 18:34

I'm going to go.

[Tom]: 18:35

but I had that exact same experience again when I came over here. And so, uh, I really spent a lot of my time trying to help people see what I did not before. And so when the CEO approached me, said this is what we do and here's some things to think about with ShotSpotter, I was blown away. I saw incredible untapped potential in this technology. And I wanted to be part of helping people understand how to use it. I wanted to help people see what I didn't before. And so that's how I ended up here.

[Scott]: 19:03

Well, yeah. And these things, when you're talking about just how they evolve, it's not even just your agency. I'm sure it's helped a lot of other, you know, state and local, other law enforcement agencies, it's probably been very beneficial to them too. I know, you know, lots of times the feds and, and state or local are, you know, partnering up in some of these bigger cases. So I'm sure it's had, um, a lot of benefit, even just outside of your agency.

[Tom]: 19:28

Yeah, well, so if you a few years back, the Police Foundation, what's now National Policing Institute, produced a report on the most useful tools to local law enforcement for fighting violent crime. They surveyed them, and the

[Scott]: 19:47

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 19:47

very top one was ballistic imaging, NIBIN, the National Integrated Ballistic Information

[Scott]: 19:53

Yeah, right.

[Tom]: 19:53

Network, and firearms tracing. These are the two pillars of crime gun intelligence. The comments in the report also pointed out that ATF was one of the best partners to the state and local authorities in fighting violent crime. Anyways,

[Shaun]: 20:12

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 20:12

to your point, I think that that's exactly right. These tools, tactics, technology of crime gun intelligence aren't just changing ATF.

[Scott]: 20:20

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 20:20

ATF proselytizes about it. But I believe it has been widely adopted by law enforcement across the country. The Department of Justice extols its virtues, major policing organizations do. And I think that's because it really works. I have a few other things to say about that, but let me take a breath. I meant in case you wanted to ask me any questions there.

[Shaun]: 20:47

Oh, okay, yeah, sorry, there you go. We're like, we're so enthralled, we're like, what?

[Scott]: 20:51

Yeah, I'm actually just

[Shaun]: 20:52

I'm like,

[Scott]: 20:52

yeah,

[Shaun]: 20:52

it's cool,

[Scott]: 20:52

like

[Shaun]: 20:52

yeah,

[Scott]: 20:52

I'm just

[Shaun]: 20:53

just

[Scott]: 20:53

listening.

[Shaun]: 20:53

breathe, just make sure you come back.

[Tom]: 20:55

Well, you gotta watch me, man. You pull my string and I go and go.

[Shaun]: 20:58

That's good, it's

[Scott]: 20:59

No,

[Shaun]: 20:59

exactly

[Scott]: 20:59

we

[Shaun]: 21:00

what

[Scott]: 21:00

like

[Shaun]: 21:00

we're looking

[Scott]: 21:00

it.

[Shaun]: 21:00

for,

[Scott]: 21:00

It's,

[Shaun]: 21:00

we love it.

[Scott]: 21:01

I mean, it's awesome.

[Shaun]: 21:02

A question for you, I do, to kind of lead that in. 150 cities have this in place, is that in the United States or is that worldwide?

[Tom]: 21:11

We are mostly deployed here in the United States. We have some deployments overseas, but mostly that's 150 American cities. It's actually 150 and growing. And when it gets to 175, I'll say 175 and growing.

[Shaun]: 21:26

There you

[Tom]: 21:26

The fact

[Shaun]: 21:26

go.

[Tom]: 21:26

of the matter is there are a lot of cities that are adopting it because they see that it works, that it does what it says it's going to do. You know, you talk about some misunderstanding. So, If somebody had asked me to explain how ShotSpotter worked before I got here, my guess would have been maybe magic? Who knows? How are you doing this? And in fact,

[Shaun]: 21:54

Morse hearing.

[Tom]: 21:54

I said that to a police leader at an organization who he had used it from the time he was a cop in the streets up until now, he's the number two in charge of the agency. And I made that joke, because I had magic. And he's like, that's exactly how I thought it worked. He said, I remember when we first got it. He said, it goes off. We go right to the spot where it tells us, and there are the casings. He said, how is that even possible? Well, what I have come to understand is it's not magic. It's math and it's science and it's technology, all well-established components that are harnessed for productive good. It really is incredible when you see it work. But the most important thing though is what you can do with it. And so I mentioned before that all I thought of it as was a pointer system for cops, right? It tells police, hey, gunfire just happened here, go there.

[Scott]: 22:50

Right.

[Tom]: 22:50

When I was at ATF, I spent almost all of my time thinking about how to investigate, arrest, and prosecute people for committing gun offenses. I really believe... Robust aggressive firearms enforcement, addressing criminal misuse of firearms is the way you address violent crime. And that's all I ever thought about. It

[Scott]: 23:08

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 23:08

didn't occur to me that aggregate gunfire data might be useful for anything but that. Coming here to sound thinking, listening to some of the brilliant people at this company talk about it, who spend a lot of time thinking about it, I realized, oh my gosh, there's a lot of other applications for this. First of all, Sometimes critics will say, wow, shot spotter doesn't lead to as many arrests as we expect it to. Well, my response to that is immediate arrests are a measure. In fact, it does sometimes lead to immediate arrest of gun offenders.

[Scott]: 23:48

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 23:48

But it's not the only measure and it's certainly not the most important measure. The most important measure of the tool's usefulness is how many gunshot wound victims does it help locate. Seems so obvious to me now, but when there's a shooting, there is very possibly someone who is wounded.

[Scott]: 24:07

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 24:07

In fact, in Oakland, California, in one year, shot spotter alerted police to more than 100 gunshot wound victims where there was no corresponding 911 call. Those are people who are not going to get timely. emergency aid but for

[Shaun]: 24:23

Right,

[Tom]: 24:23

shot spotter.

[Shaun]: 24:24

right,

[Tom]: 24:24

That never even occurred

[Scott]: 24:25

Mm-hmm.

[Shaun]: 24:25

wow.

[Tom]: 24:25

to me. It seems

[Shaun]: 24:26

Wow,

[Scott]: 24:26

Yeah.

[Shaun]: 24:26

yeah.

[Tom]: 24:26

obvious, right? When I say it

[Shaun]: 24:28

Yeah. Hmm.

[Tom]: 24:29

did not occur to me. Obviously I did know its value for helping steer police to the valuable ballistic evidence that gets left behind at crime scenes, the casings. And there's academic research that shows when police agencies use shot spotter, they will increase the amount of ballistic evidence they collect. That's more fuel for ballistic imaging, not even for investigators to follow up on. And here's the other thing. What we see is that when police put together aggressive follow-up investigations, they increase the number of arrests they make. And that makes sense, right? Even on a fast response, two, three minutes, cops are on scene. When somebody's shooting and flees, Two or three minutes is not a long time, but it's long enough to run to a place where police may not see you when they get there. So very often people have fled. But if you start investigating, you may well find out who's responsible. There's a couple of ways you do that. First of all, of course, you're collecting the ballistic evidence, right? You're making matches. Maybe it connects to some significant crime that occurred in the recent past. or some crime where you have good evidence, right? Video surveillance evidence or something. But here's the thing, most of the time when crimes like this occur, someone in the community knows about it. That's

[Scott]: 25:57

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 25:57

the reason that trust is so important. People have to believe that police will use their information effectively before they're going to want to cooperate. And we talk a lot about eroding trust. People talk about... over policing. I'm not entirely convinced that that's as big a problem as people believe. In fact,

[Scott]: 26:20

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 26:20

in a lot of ways, there's some under policing that goes on. But even the idea of policing, do people want to be policed? I don't think so.

[Shaun]: 26:32

No.

[Tom]: 26:32

And so I think you can look at it in a different way. It's community protection. So ShotSpotter is not deployed across all of America. I wish that it was. To me, it's public safety infrastructure. In the

[Scott]: 26:49

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 26:50

same way that the humble smoke alarm has helped reduce deaths from fire, I really do believe gunshot detection can help reduce deaths from gun crime. But we're not deployed everywhere. But we are deployed in places that have suffered disproportionately high amounts. of gun crime. And to me, that makes complete sense. Why wouldn't you want to put a tool in a place where it's likely to do the greatest good? To a point you made earlier, gun violence doesn't hit everyone the same way.

[Scott]: 27:23

Mm-hmm.

[Shaun]: 27:23

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 27:23

We know that more people die in communities of color. Young black men get killed at a disproportionately high rate. Why wouldn't you want to use a tool that can help address that, reduce that? The gun violence falls disproportionately heavy on their heads. And that's tragic. And I think that we can do something about it.

[Scott]: 27:47

Well, it's definitely become a thing where it's become a part of a bigger mission, right, where it's more community involvement. It's it's, it goes beyond that, right? Just what kind of what it, what it started as.

[Tom]: 27:59

Well, that's right. So, you know, the system helps point out where gunfire occurs. Important for all the reasons I pointed out. Timely

[Scott]: 28:09

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 28:09

aid to victims, recovering evidence. But looking at that information in the aggregate, you can start to do a few other things. There's the obvious use for a police leadership to deploy police resources. When and where do we have the most shootings so we staff accordingly. But... We know that this violence occurs at a hyper local level. And so we sometimes talk about deploying community resources, but even that is painting with a broad brush. It's not the whole community that's likely to be engaged in this activity. And so if you're looking to intervene, for instance, many shootings are retaliatory and you know specifically where a shooting occurs, Although police often may know immediately who's involved or have suspicions, so too might people in that community who can take a different approach to intervening, who can keep another shooting from

[Scott]: 29:10

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 29:10

occurring. And so if you can share this timely information with those violence interrupters and that sort of thing, maybe you can prevent other shootings from occurring. There are other uses. There's a body of evidence that says, prolonged indirect trauma to gunfire has lots of negative consequences. So a lot of these shootings, unfortunately many of them hit not just the victim and sometimes not the intended victim at all, but bystanders. But even if you're not struck by gunfire, the hearing it can have real consequences for you. And so imagine... that a young student hears gunfire outside his or her house at night. All right, they've got to go to school the next morning. They're scared to go. It starts to manifest in ways

[Scott]: 30:05

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 30:05

that causes negative behavior. If we can use that information to help school officials know, hey, this is a student who might benefit from increased attention, trauma informed care, then maybe we can help that person. address some of the negative consequences that come from living around gunfire. Just some of the ways that I think we're looking to use this information in novel applications.

[Shaun]: 30:38

That's great too, because it's not just about just, for lack of a better term, jamming up criminals that are doing bad things with gun, it's also helping all the peripheral. I would say to anybody that's maybe from the military side of the house, you go to a place where people are shooting at you and it sticks with you for the rest of your life. You see advertisements about, hey, remember 4th of July? It's not just dogs that freak out now about gun shots and fires that sound like that. It's also veterans and things like that. So you can see where there's a connection there that definitely... is a much more moral value, I'd say, to a community for that, because the stress of living under those conditions as such a young person is probably something the vast majority of Americans probably have no clue what that's about. But if a city that's not participating in this right now feels that they need to, how do they go about doing it? Are there grants out there? Are there things like that? I mean, what do you think is the biggest stumbling block to that if there is any?

[Tom]: 31:31

Well, I don't think that there's a big stumbling block. There is a cost to implementation, but the administration has put its money where its mouth is when it comes to providing technology for law enforcement. Federal grants are available, other sources of federal funding. Many communities have used direct funding to deploy ShotSpotter there. There was a recent study out of Winston-Salem. They deployed it. And this academic analysis of their deployment of shotspotter quantified the cost savings. And that's not something we talk about a lot.

[Scott]: 32:14

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 32:16

We read about the human cost of gun violence, the families that are destroyed, the lives that are destroyed, the injuries, but there's an economic cost. two,

[Scott]: 32:26

And I

[Tom]: 32:26

a

[Scott]: 32:26

think

[Tom]: 32:26

massive

[Scott]: 32:26

that's the

[Tom]: 32:27

one to communities.

[Scott]: 32:27

best way to

[Tom]: 32:28

There's

[Scott]: 32:28

do

[Tom]: 32:28

the direct

[Scott]: 32:28

it. Thank

[Tom]: 32:28

costs,

[Scott]: 32:28

you.

[Tom]: 32:29

right? Having to have police and emergency services. There are the medical costs, right? Many gunshot wound victims are not insured. And so the cost of providing that treatment is passed on to everyone in higher premiums. There's the loss

[Scott]: 32:46

Mm hmm.

[Tom]: 32:46

of economic vitality. And so gun violence is very costly for us as a nation.

[Shaun]: 32:54

Yeah.

[Tom]: 32:55

and shot spotter is less costly. And so I really do encourage people who are looking at these things to think about the big picture. I know first handing a former federal bureaucrat myself, sometimes it's very

[Scott]: 33:10

Thank

[Tom]: 33:10

easy

[Scott]: 33:11

you.

[Tom]: 33:11

to get caught up in spreadsheets and direct dollar amounts and allocated categories,

[Scott]: 33:17

Right. Yeah.

[Tom]: 33:18

but I really do think that it takes kind of a landscape level view. You have to think about these things in the big picture and make those sorts of decisions. I think that's the sort of conversation that's going on in the country today and I frankly am glad about it.

[Scott]: 33:34

Do you get to Sean's question, do you get a lot of agencies that contact you, maybe trying to look for some help or some direction on how they can get involved in that program?

[Tom]: 33:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're a company, we have salespeople. But I will tell you, so this is interesting. You know, I was a federal employee from the time I was 19 years old until I retired last year. And as I was approaching Chapter two, guys would tell me, oh, you're going to see in the private sector, it's all about the bottom line. And maybe that is true in some places. But I have never felt that here. And it's because this is a company that tries to do what it says it does. It's very mission focused. It's part of the reason that I came here because it was so

[Shaun]: 34:21

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 34:21

directly applicable to what I had dealt with. And so, if somebody is curious about, they should pick up the phone. They should shoot an email. They're not going out whether shot spotter is the right solution for them. I find high pressure sales. They are going to find knowledgeable people. that explain how the system specializes things. As a system works, can provide access to people to talk about any as a company. I think we embrace the idea that the adoption of technology by law enforcement should have kind of broad public support and especially informed by the people it's likely to impact. It's the reason. that we engage with the media, even when sometimes the media is critical of us. It's the reason that our CEO and a lot of our employees show up at community groups to talk about these things. Because we believe in the product, we believe in the technology, call and ask. There are other solutions, we believe in its power. And so if somebody wonders, is this gonna work for me? Out there, if you go, there is plenty of access here. the academic research about using acoustic gunshot detection. Bureau of Justice Assistance, BJA, put out a problem-oriented policing guide written by an academic named Dennis Mayors. And it takes a brand neutral view of gunshot detection. But you can read it, a summary of the state of the technology. They can go there and read it. It's... It's posted on Google search. You probably drop a link to it in your comments or however these things work on podcasts. You can see much of it is focused on ShotSpotter itself. So if somebody wants to

[Shaun]: 36:16

Yeah,

[Tom]: 36:16

read

[Shaun]: 36:16

yeah,

[Scott]: 36:17

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 36:17

sort

[Shaun]: 36:17

if you

[Tom]: 36:17

of

[Shaun]: 36:17

get that first.

[Tom]: 36:17

neutral.

[Shaun]: 36:17

Now somebody wants to get a hold of you for some of the talks that you do, Tom, things like that. How can they do that?

[Tom]: 36:23

Well, I'm not exactly a LinkedIn influencer, but I am active on LinkedIn.

[Scott]: 36:29

Thank you.

[Tom]: 36:30

I will tell you, so as I was approaching retirement, I used LinkedIn kind of as a passive repository. If I got quoted in a news article or something, I would drop it in there. And then, but I never put any commentary on there. I always tried to be very careful in what I posted. And then there was a particularly bad week where there was a DEA agent that was killed out in Arizona and a couple other officers were shot with no comment. I posted something that I, and I was quoted in an article and I think that's the article it was about. And I posted it and rather than posting it, truly felt I said the men and women on the front lines of law enforcement are my heroes. That's more on there. What I found is, man, I really like writing stuff.

[Scott]: 37:26

Yeah.

[Tom]: 37:27

I like thinking about things. I like reading about things. And then I like writing and speaking about the things I've read and thought about. And so I put posts on LinkedIn about a gunshot detective. I truly believe that. I truly feel that way. And I was surprised. A few people hit the thumbs up, the like on that comment. Um, and so just over time I have started adding, uh, evidence, but, uh, second amendment law, um, I summarize

[Scott]: 37:59

Mm-hmm.

[Tom]: 38:00

a lot of LinkedIn and, uh, you could follow up and, uh, I think kind of interesting criminal law cases and other things. So anyways, uh, search for Thomas Chidam on read what I write and maybe one day I will be a LinkedIn influencer.

[Shaun]: 38:14

That's all right. You're already influencing me, man. It's good stuff. I really appreciate your time today, Tom. So it's

[Tom]: 38:19

Hahaha

[Shaun]: 38:19

really good. Again, thanks for stopping by. We'd love to have you back to talk about some of the progress that you've made and some of the bigger cases. I mean, I know you can't just say this was our favorite case or whatever, but someday real success stories out there and then how they proceeded through the courts and stuff like that. But can't thank you enough for the time. Now folks, if you want to get a hold of us on any level, you know how to do that. It's through our Gmail account, which is threecopstalk at gmail.com. That's the number threecopstalk at gmail.com. This episode and any other episode you can get wherever you listen to podcasts. Please subscribe, like, leave a review, share with a friend. If you want to catch up with us on past episodes, you can go to our website, which is www.threecopstalk.com. Until we see you guys again, be safe, and we'll see you soon.

[Scott]: 39:14

Mine's still showing uploading.