CHICAGO, IL —Today, a settlement was reached in a long-running lawsuit that challenged the City of Chicago’s use of ShotSpotter for violating people’s constitutional and civil rights. As part of the settlement, the City agreed that a ShotSpotter alert does not give police justification to stop or pat down a person who happens to be near the location of an alert. The City cancelled its contract for ShotSpotter last year and stopped using the system in September 2024.  

“The City made the right decision when it cancelled its ShotSpotter contract last fall,” said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center, a non-profit civil rights organization in Chicago.  “ShotSpotter generated tens of thousands of unfounded alerts every year, driving aggressive and unwarranted police deployments and prompting many illegal police stops and pat-downs. Today’s settlement confirms that ShotSpotter was never worth the cost.” 

The lawsuit was filed three years ago on behalf of a class of Chicago residents who were harmed by Chicago’s use of ShotSpotter. The lawsuit focused on the tens of thousands of ShotSpotter alerts every year that led police to find no evidence of gunfire or gun crime, but often resulted in unwarranted police stops that violated the Fourth Amendment. 

The lawsuit also challenged the racially disparate way that Chicago deployed ShotSpotter sensors, imposing numerous harms on Black and Latine communities, in violation of the Illinois Civil Rights Act. ShotSpotter’s harms included aggressive, hostile, and illegal police encounters and it slowed (or rendered non-existent) police response to actual 9-1-1 calls from residents seeking help as Chicago diverted massive resources responding to nearly 100 unfounded ShotSpotter alerts every day. 

“ShotSpotter does not make people in Chicago safer but instead perpetuates aggressive police tactics under the illusion of objective science,” said Freddy Martinez, Executive Director of Lucy Parsons Labs, a Chicago-based investigative non-profit that was a plaintiff in the lawsuit at an earlier stage of the case. “It’s clear that ShotSpotter was a failed technology that did little more that siphon off public money to shady vendors.” 

The settlement includes compensation for two men who brought the lawsuit on behalf of a putative class. They were each stopped, frisked, and detained after ShotSpotter sent police to investigate non-existent gunfire in two separate incidents on the South and Northwest sides of Chicago. 

“Today’s settlement achieves some measure of justice for two men who served as lead plaintiffs in this important case challenging ShotSpotter’s use,” said Daniel Massoglia, Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at First Defense Legal Aid.  “Like so many other Chicagoans, their lives were upended when police detained them on the streets just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when a ShotSpotter alert went off.” 

Earlier this year, the City issued a Request for Proposals for new surveillance technology potentially to replace ShotSpotter. The City has not made any public announcement about the current status of that Request. It remains unclear if the City will sign a new contract for ShotSpotter or another surveillance system.  

“The City does not need more police surveillance. But if the City brings back ShotSpotter or some other similar technology, we will be prepared to go back to court to protect the civil rights of Chicagoans,” said Manes. “Nothing in today’s settlement prevents a future lawsuit challenging CPD surveillance tech. We will be watching closely.” 

The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys Manes and Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center, Massoglia and Hannah Marion of First Defense Legal Aid, and Elizabeth Mazur of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. The case is Ortiz v. City of Chicago, No. 22-cv-3773, filed in the federal district court in Chicago. A separate lawsuit, Williams v. City of Chicago, No. 24-cv-1396, was severed from the Ortiz matter last year and remains pending in the same federal court.  

For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact media@macarthurjustice.org