On a quiet afternoon in May 2023, the sound of gunfire shattered the calm near Roosevelt High School in Petworth, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Seventeen-year-old Jefferson Luna-Perez lay fatally wounded in the parking lot. It was a crime that should have activated an alert from the city’s high-tech ShotSpotter gun detection system—designed precisely for moments like this. But the system registered nothing.

Just a few hundred feet away, one of ShotSpotter’s acoustic sensors stood silent, despite being well within its 1,200-foot detection range. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) later confirmed the technology failed to detect the gunfire. By the time officers arrived, Luna-Perez was unconscious and unresponsive. He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

This tragic oversight has thrown a spotlight once again on a system that has long promised quick detection and faster responses to gun violence—but has yet to prove it consistently delivers. The D.C. government has spent millions of dollars on ShotSpotter over two decades, but mounting evidence suggests the return on that investment remains unclear, both in terms of lives saved and crimes solved.

The idea behind ShotSpotter is deceptively simple. Sensors mounted on rooftops across the city listen continuously for the distinct acoustic fingerprint of gunfire. When detected, the system should send an alert to local police within seconds. In theory, this allows officers to respond even if no 911 call comes in—potentially reaching victims sooner, securing crime scenes faster, and recovering evidence before it disappears.

But the death of Luna-Perez—and the silence of the system designed to protect residents like him—raises uncomfortable questions: What good is a gunshot detection network if it can’t detect actual gunshots? And how many more incidents might it be missing?

Investigative reporters from City Paper and the Investigative Reporting Workshop examined MPD’s internal crime data alongside ShotSpotter alert records spanning over a decade, from January 2014 through January 2025. They discovered at least three confirmed shooting incidents in ShotSpotter-covered areas that the system failed to register. It’s a sobering reminder that what’s being detected may only be part of the story.

The larger concern is the systemic gap in oversight. MPD does maintain an archive of audio data captured by ShotSpotter sensors, but it does not keep a log matching these alerts to confirmed shootings. That means officials have no reliable way to distinguish between real gunfire and similar sounds like fireworks or car backfires. Despite public assurances, the precision of the system remains in question.

Even more concerning is that the police department no longer seems to know where all the sensors are located. In a response to a 2023 Freedom of Information Act request, MPD revealed that SoundThinking Inc.—the California-based company that licenses the ShotSpotter technology—had stopped providing exact sensor placement information to the District. “MPD contracts for a coverage area, but MPD does not have sensor placement information,” the agency wrote. It is unclear when this critical data sharing stopped or why.

ShotSpotter was first installed in D.C. in 2005, with backing from the FBI as part of a broader “Building a Safer DC” initiative. Its early deployment focused on the Seventh District, which includes many parts of Wards 7 and 8—areas long grappling with high crime rates and systemic inequality. Over time, the network expanded to cover roughly 17 square miles across six of the city’s seven police districts.

Since 2016 alone, city records show D.C. has paid more than $5.16 million to SoundThinking. In 2019, the city even upgraded and widened the system’s footprint. Then, in 2021, ShotSpotter opened its East Coast headquarters in Washington. Mayor Muriel Bowser attended the opening and praised the system as a tool for enhancing public safety. “ShotSpotter allows us to make the best use of our police resources,” she said at the time.

Still, critics have not been quiet. Nationally, the technology has faced growing scrutiny over its accuracy and implications for civil rights. Several cities—including Chicago and San Diego—have terminated or reconsidered their contracts with ShotSpotter following independent audits and community pushback. The system has been accused of disproportionately targeting communities of color due to the location of its sensors and its role in facilitating aggressive policing tactics.

When a reporter asked Mayor Bowser in 2021 whether she was concerned ShotSpotter might contribute to overpolicing in Wards 7 and 8, she responded with a curt, “No.”

Yet, the incident involving Luna-Perez suggests that D.C.’s continued reliance on this system may require more than just a political defense. It may demand a thorough re-evaluation of whether the technology is achieving its core promise—to save lives.

The question remains: If a young man can be shot in broad daylight near a school and the multi-million-dollar detection system doesn’t notice, what exactly is it doing?

As concerns grow and the data gap widens, D.C. residents are left wondering whether the tools meant to protect them are truly up to the task—or simply giving the illusion of safety.

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