City Police tests new gunshot detection system

By: Giselle Chang

Posted: 11/20/08

Senior Andrew Brandel, who lives at the Sigma Phi Epsilon House on West 29th Street, was on his way to class on Monday when he encountered several police officers firing gun rounds into a truck.

"They had a truck outside in the middle of the road and it was filled with sand," Brandel said. "There was one guy standing in it and firing the gun into the sand."

The police were testing the new SECURES gunshot detection system, which was given to Hopkins at no cost by Planning Systems Incorporated (PSI).

The three-mile radius covered by the system encompasses the area around campus, including the whole Charles Village area.

According to Edmund Skrodzki, Executive Director of Campus Safety, it will increase protection in the Homewood campus and the Charles Village area.

"It adds another layer of high-tech security to protect the University community as well as the Charles Village residents both as a deterrent and a faster response to a shooting incident," Skrodzki said.

The new technology was implemented by Hopkins and the Baltimore Police without the knowledge of the Charles Village community.

Brandel said that he had not been notified that the test, which continued for more than 15 minutes and was rather disturbing, was going to occur.

Dana Moore, head of the Charles Village Civic Association (CVCA), also voiced concern that no one from the CVCA was asked to participate in the decision-making process for the SECURES system.

"Given the system's reach beyond the campus' footprint and into Charles Village proper, the community associations within Charles Village should have been consulted and our constituents polled as to whether this experiment is one we wished to engage in with our good neighbor, JHU," Moore wrote in an e-mail.

Tracey Reeves, the Hopkins director of News and Information, said that she could not imagine why the Charles Village community would have anything against the system as there are no privacy issues and it gives the residents more protection.

Both she and Skrodzki emphasized that the SECURES gunshot detection system is not a response to problems of gunshot activity, but rather it is an effort to increase the security of Hopkins.

Moore, on the other hand, believes the instillation of the system implies that Charles Village has a gun violence problem.

"This effort [to increase awareness that Charles Village is a great place to live] is made more challenging in the face of an assumption that the area is one so rife with gun violence that the SECURES system is thought to be beneficial . . . such an assumption is inappropriate as to Charles Village," she wrote.

The recently tested and completely new system consists of 93 acoustic sensors located on lamp posts in areas that encircle the campus: University Parkway to the North, 25th Street to the South, Barclay Street to the East and Charles Street to the West, with additional west coverage extending to Howard Street.

Reeves explained that the sensors of the SECURES gunshot detection system would pick up gunshots and then relay the information to the Hopkins Homewood Communication Center (HCC).

"That sound of the gunshot will come up on the LCD screen as a big red burst," she said. "The dispatchers from the center see this burst and notify the Baltimore Police who then go out. It is not the University Police who respond."

Skrodzki pointed to the benefits of the system's speed. Since the relaying of information from the sensor to the HCC takes only 3-5 seconds, the Baltimore Police will be able to respond more quickly to both aid victims and potentially apprehend the criminal.

While Skrodzki said implementing the system was a collaborative effort between Hopkins, PSI and the Baltimore Police Department, Moore is joined by other Charles Village community members and officials in voicing the lack of the larger community's consent or even consideration.

Mary Pat Clarke, the councilwoman for Charles Village believes awareness and cooperation are key tools in fighting crime.

"As we used to say, 'High tech lacks the effect of high touch.' Next time, let's engage the community itself in how best to protect and celebrate our JHU population," she wrote.

The technologically innovative detection system, developed by the Reston, Va.-based company, PSI, specializes in threat detection devices.

"PSI has new technology and they're trying to promote it so they set it up and give it to you free and hope that word gets out," Reeves said. "It's basically promotional."

Though other universities in different cities have similar types of gunshot detection systems, Hopkins is the first with this particular and highly accurate (90 percent accuracy rate) technology.

This afternoon at 1 p.m., a live demonstration of the system will be conducted for the news media in the Wyman Park Dell area of 29th and Charles Street.