The gunfire-detection system ShotSpotter will be restored for 90 days while city manager Yi-An Huang brings the question of a permanent return to residents, Cambridge city councillors decided Monday in a 6-3 vote.
The decision will be made with a form of direct democracy novel to Cambridge: the resident assembly.
The city manager must convene and hold an assembly within the next three months of “a representative group of Cambridge residents, selected by a lottery, to hear evidence from experts, stakeholders and community members,” said mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, who co-sponsored the proposal. Huang will bring the assembly’s recommendations on ShotSpotter and public safety in general before the council.
The council voted May 18 to disable ShotSpotter in Cambridge, with a five-member majority saying there was no evidence the system keeps anyone safe, and a fear that the system could be used for surveillance by the federal government.
Then came the July 4 killing of Xavier Bautista, 32, a Public Works employee for the city, near his home in The Port neighborhood. If ShotSpotter was active and happened to hear the shooting, a faster response could have saved Bautista’s life, some said.
The campaign to deactivate ShotSpotter was made without buy-in from Cambridge’s Black and brown community, councillor E. Denise Simmons said, and “they felt disrespected because no one asked them.”
The lottery selecting residents for the assembly will be weighted in favor of residents who live in neighborhoods with higher instances of gun violence – including The Port – “so that recommendations reflect the judgment of those most directly affected.”
Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler pushed back on the idea that affected communities had been excluded from the decision. “Black and urban residents have been leading this conversation from the beginning,” he said, citing The Black Response, a member group of the Stop ShotSpotter Camberville Coalition, which organized against the deployment of the surveillance technology.
The order for a 90-day reconsideration replaced one by Simmons and councillor Tim Flaherty to restore ShotSpotter immediately during a public process with no set end date. It was introduced at a contentious July 23 special meeting but tabled until Monday.
Siddiqui and councillor Marc McGovern, who co-sponsored the substitute order, were among the May votes to deactivate ShotSpotter and said they still had serious concerns, but felt a temporary restoration was an acceptable compromise. “Turning it on for 90 days while we engage in this process would be a demonstration to those folks who felt unheard that we are hearing them now,” McGovern said.
The votes in favor of the 90 days were Flaherty, McGovern, Siddiqui, Simmons, vice mayor Burhan Azeem and councillor Cathie Zusy. The votes against were from Sobrinho-Wheeler and councillors Ayah Al-Zubi and Patty Nolan.
It was unclear how quickly ShotSpotter would be back online. “Bringing the technology back online involves several technical and operational steps for which we do not yet have a specific timeline,” said Jennie Lopez, new director of communications for the police.
The city’s police unions, the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association and Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said Tuesday: “It’s a positive development that for the next 90 days Cambridge will be a safer city through the redeployment of acoustic gunfire detection. But residents and businesses deserve a permanent commitment to public safety from the Cambridge City Council and all city officials.”
Trying the resident assembly
Some councillors were wary of the added challenges of an untested process. “My concern is just that we’re going to be back here in 90 days asking for an extension on ShotSpotter because we won’t have a result yet,” Azeem said. Councillor Zusy referred to the assembly as a “detour.”
Huang, who originally offered the resident assembly as an option on July 23, was game but realistic. “Most of the models for resident assemblies have a much longer timeline,” he said. “We’ll be doing this for the first time.”
Resident assemblies were debated in 2024 by a special committee looking at updating Cambridge’s 80-year-old governing charter, but the council rejected the idea. “We were not ready to take that step, but there was general support for trying something like this,” McGovern said Monday.
ShotSpotter was deployed in Cambridge in 2014 with grant funding from the Department of Homeland Security. At the time, the city didn’t need council approval to introduce surveillance technology.
The council also voted to have the resident assembly look into putting nighttime security cameras in Cambridge public parks, an expansion of the cameras approved by the council in September 2024 for higher-crime spots in Central Square. A just-received $120,000 grant would allow placement of cameras “any time now,” acting police commissioner Pauline Wells said.
Coupled with violence prevention
In addition to the ShotSpotter reactivation and assembly, councillors passed orders related to violence response and prevention by Sobrinho-Wheeler.
The first requested a staff update on recommendations made in February, including expanding the work of the unarmed Community Safety Department. Its Community Assistance Response and Engagement team can be deployed in response to certain 911 calls, but operates only weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Councillors agreed that the team is underutilized. “We need to be deploying them to every single possible 911 call,” Nolan said. “We should not be overloading the police for that.”
The second requested a comprehensive evaluation of violence response and prevention strategies as well as survivor services. The order takes a broad view of what constitutes violence prevention, citing conventional policing, surveillance technology and violence prevention programs such as CARE, but including affordable housing, job training and mental health care.
Several public commenters who opposed ShotSpotter held up violence prevention programs as alternatives, or at least necessary companions. Public safety and violence prevention should be tackled by departments citywide, Sobrinho-Wheeler said. The Department of Human Service Programs, “the Multi-Service Center, the Housing Department, the Public Health Department and the Cambridge Health Alliance all have really critical roles in public safety,” he said. “We cannot leave that out and just talk about specific technologies or about policing.”
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