SoundThinking, the parent company of the gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter, is quietly purchasing the staff, patents, and customers of the company that developed the infamous predictive Policing software Predpol, according to sources at WIRED.
During an earnings call in August, SoundThinking CEO Ralph Clark informed investors that the company was in negotiations to acquire certain assets of Geolitica (formerly known as PredPol) and migrate its customers to SoundThinking’s own “patrol management” solution.
“We have already recruited their engineering team,” Clark stated during the call, which has a publicly accessible transcript. He additionally mentioned that the acquisition of patents and staff would “aid in the implementation of AI and machine learning technology in public safety.”
By assimilating Geolitica, SoundThinking is taking another step towards becoming the dominant player in crime-fighting technology—an all-in-one provider of policing tools. Experts studying the use of technology in law enforcement view the consolidation of these two controversial technologies as signaling a new era for the cop-tech industry, with the potential to shape the future of policing in the United States. And while SoundThinking has rebranded “predictive policing” as resource management for police departments, a WIRED analysis of one of the company’s applications has shown that crime-forecasting technology remains one of its primary offerings.
“In terms of tech history, this acquisition is significant,” says Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at American University and author of The Rise of Big Data Policing. “We are currently experiencing a consolidation phase, wherein big police tech companies are growing even larger, and this move is a step in that direction.”
PredPol, one of the first and most widely used predictive policing algorithms in the United States, became synonymous with the practice. Developed in 2011, the software utilizes historical crime incident reports to generate daily predictions about future crime hotspots. For years, critics and academics have argued that the PredPol algorithm perpetuates biased policing patterns by relying on historical and unreliable crime data. In December 2021, Gizmodo and The Markup analyzed millions of crime predictions made by Geolitica that were discovered on an unsecured server and found that the software disproportionately targeted low-income communities of color, often resulting in relentless additional patrols.
In recent years, police departments have abandoned PredPol after finding it to be ineffective. A report by the inspector general of the Los Angeles Police Department in 2019 concluded that the impact of PredPol on crime trends was unclear. The LAPD, an early adopter of PredPol that had partnered with researchers to develop the technology, discontinued its use in 2020 due to budget constraints.
Geolitica CEO Brian MacDonald declined an interview and did not respond to specific questions regarding the acquisitions. SoundThinking’s third-party spokesperson, Rob Merritt, informed WIRED that Geolitica will cease operations at the end of the year.
Consolidation Game
Established in 1996, SoundThinking is currently valued at approximately $232 million. At the core of its product lineup is ShotSpotter, a gunshot-detection system that uses microphones installed on traffic signals and lampposts to identify and locate possible gunfire. Activists and academics across the United States have long opposed the expansion of ShotSpotter, arguing that it not only provides inaccurate results but also tends to be deployed disproportionately in non-white neighborhoods.
Investigations conducted by local media outlets, including The Houston Chronicle and Southwest Ohio’s WYSO, revealed that ShotSpotter alerts frequently led to dead ends for the police and, in some instances, delayed response times for other service calls. In 2021, the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law analyzed records maintained by Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications over a two-year period and discovered that 89 percent of ShotSpotter alerts in the city did not result in the police finding any evidence of a gun-related crime.
