The Aurora Police Department will be cracking down on New Year’s Eve celebratory gunfire this year, the department said on Tuesday, by focusing on identified hotspot areas and responding to all ShotSpotter activations in the city.
The city has had its ShotSpotter service, which detects gunfire within a certain area, since 2022. It works by using AI to detect gunfire and then triangulating its location using sensors throughout the area. The sound is sent to an incident review center, and, after being reviewed, the information is sent to dispatchers and to police officers’ phones and squad car laptops.
Roughly two square miles of Aurora is covered by ShotSpotter. The areas covered include certain neighborhoods or other areas that historically have had more gunfire, while leaving out the areas that have not.
The department does not publicly release where its coverage areas are, but police leadership has said that around 40% of all confirmed shootings since 2022 have taken place within those two square miles, which represents just 4% of the city’s total land.
“ShotSpotter helps officers get to the right location faster, improves situational awareness, and helps us hold offenders accountable while keeping our community safe – especially during high-risk times like New Year’s Eve,” Aurora Police Chief Matt Thomas said in a news release Tuesday.
The department’s New Year’s Eve effort is meant to address what the department called a “recurring problem in many cities,” noting that stray bullets from celebratory gunfire have the potential to strike innocent people.
During the upcoming holiday, the department plans to deploy patrol resources to the areas that experienced the highest levels of celebratory gunfire during the last New Year’s Eve and July 4th holidays, Tuesday’s news release said.
On New Year’s Eve, officers will also be responding to all ShotSpotter activations across Aurora, with a particular focus on identified hotspot areas, police said. Anyone found illegally discharging a firearm will be arrested, according to the department.
Police officers will still be conducting regular citywide patrols to prevent crime, handle disturbances and enforce impaired-driving laws on New Year’s Eve, the department said.
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com