The summary here seems to be that no, police do not regularly invent false positives for ShotSpotter.
Regarding:
1) How do you know you are dealing with a false alarm? Given the seriousness of gun violence, isn't it perfectly reasonable to send someone to investigate the situation rather than to ignore it?
2 and 3) Isn't it also the case that black neighbourhoods in Chicago have the highest gun violence and murder rate? What else would you expect from ShotSpotter other than for it to confirm that those neighbourhoods are indeed the ones with the most shots fired?
> The summary here seems to be that no, police do not regularly invent false positives for ShotSpotter.
Right. That was the part I referred to as misremembering in my above comment. The false alarms come from the system itself, not necessarily police lying about it. However the reports from multiple sources do say that false alarms occur at an alarming rate, and this leads to over policing.
I wanted to provide a citation for the article's claims of over policing, and I believe I have done so (the ACLU article has multiple high quality sources clearly linked in the first few paragraphs).
Your comment mentioned that shotspotter leading to a high police presence is "obviously a good thing" and that if you lived there, you would want this too. But if the residents were happy with what was happening, there would be no controversy. The problem with over policing is that it leads to unfair treatment of marginalized communities, and this is what people are unhappy about.
It seems like you are trying to reason away these concerns, or get me to answer your follow on questions, but I am not an expert here, just someone who remembered seeing articles about issues with the system. I would encourage you to review those sources and check their methodology regarding false positive detection rates, and seek additional information about over policing.
Regarding:
1) How do you know you are dealing with a false alarm? Given the seriousness of gun violence, isn't it perfectly reasonable to send someone to investigate the situation rather than to ignore it?
2 and 3) Isn't it also the case that black neighbourhoods in Chicago have the highest gun violence and murder rate? What else would you expect from ShotSpotter other than for it to confirm that those neighbourhoods are indeed the ones with the most shots fired?