NRATV host says 'ShotSpotter' not enough to slow Chicago violence

NRATV host Grant Stinchfield said Friday that the Chicago Police Department’s expansion of new technology would not be enough to solve Chicago’s violence problem, calling for more aggressive police action and prosecution of gun criminals.

Stinchfield said tools such as “ShotSpotter,” which alerts police of gun fire in the few high-crime neighborhoods where the technology has been installed, are merely reactive and will not do enough to prevent the shots from being fired in the first place.

Citing an interview with The Trace, Stinchfield criticized Chicago Deputy Chief Jonathan Lewin for focusing on enhancing and expanding technology instead of calling for more police officers to patrol the streets.

“They need to get back to real patrols and use the very effective ‘stop and frisk’ procedure,” Stinchfield said. “The safety and security of the people in Chicago depend on it.”

Stinchfield’s comments on the controversial stop-and-frisk method of policing, which allows law enforcement officers to search individuals with little to no probable cause, align with President Donald Trump’s thoughts on the matter, who has repeatedly hailed the policy as it was implemented in New York City.

These comments also come on the same day the Chicago Tribune reported that even though Cook County judges have doubled the bond rates since 2012 for those charged with felony gun crimes, those same gun criminals are posting bond at an even faster rate.

Add those statistics to data that show Chicago police have made fewer gun arrests over the last four years, and one can start to see some of the reasons why gun crime continues to be such a big problem in the city.

While the ‘ShotSpotter’ technology can’t prevent shots from being fired or gun criminals from posting bond at an alarming rate, Deputy Chief Lewin argues that it can allow officers to arrive at gun crime scenes more quickly and track the 20 percent of shootings that are not reported with 911 calls.

“When criminals realize that there is a great likelihood that the police are going to respond much more quickly and with much more accurate location information, and that they are going to conduct follow-ups in a much more thorough way, hopefully that will change their behavior,” Lewin said.