Rantz: With help of KING 5, Tacoma activists set sights on ShotSpotter technology

A group of far-left activists recently held a panel to criticize an investment by the city of Tacoma in ShotSpotter technology. But KING 5 News will have you believe there’s some organic community opposition.

ShotSpotter is a gunshot detection technology that uses acoustic sensors that can help pinpoint the location of gunfire in real time. This data helps law enforcement respond more quickly and accurately to gun violence. Moreover, it provides data that can help police more quickly find evidence associated with the crime. Using an $800,000 federal grant, the city of Tacoma installed ShotSpotter as part of a three-year pilot program.

Anti-police activists oppose the technology, claiming it leads to “over-policing” in Black communities.

While KING 5 portrayed the event and the criticism as a genuine, grassroots response, the reality is far from that portrayal.

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Why are Tacoma activists upset with the use of ShotSpotter?

Anti-police and far-left activists have routinely criticized the ShotSpotter technology. The KING 5 report intended to uncritically amplify those concerns.

“ShotSpotter is dangerous,” Black Panther Party Minister of Defense Bunchy Carter said at the panel. “And the city of Tacoma is only going to become more dangerous because of it.”

Offering similar criticism, Accountable Tacoma member LaTasha Palmer told KING 5 reporter Brady Wakayama that ShotSpotter represents “an unnecessary over-policing of our communities” because it “automatically” labels the communities as dangerous.

The core of the panel’s complaints is that ShotSpotter will increase police presence in black neighborhoods — a notion presented as a negative, rooted in the activists’ belief that police officers inherently pose a threat to black communities. But this criticism simply doesn’t hold water.

ShotSpotter doesn’t make Tacoma dangerous; it’s a response to a dangerous Tacoma

Tacoma isn’t dangerous because of ShotSpotter technology, nor does ShotSpotter label a neighborhood as dangerous.

The tech is being implemented precisely because certain neighborhoods in Tacoma face high crime rates. And when the danger is concentrated in majority-black neighborhoods, it’s black residents who are most impacted.

It’s hardly “over-policing” for officers to respond to gunfire — that’s exactly what police are there to do: respond to crime. If Tacoma police ignored gunshots, the same voices now complaining about over-policing would be quick to claim their communities are being abandoned by law enforcement.

“The way that you prevent gun violence is not by showing up after the gun goes off,” Carter claimed at the event. “You prevent gun violence by giving people a reason not to pick up a gun in the first place.”

Actually, when you arrest criminals with a propensity to shoot at people, police do, in fact, help prevent gun violence. That Carter pretends otherwise reveals his anti-police attitude.

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KING 5, again, pushes an ideological agenda

Left-wing KING 5 has an ideological agenda, eager to support any left-wing cause — even when it doesn’t reflect the community they’re supposed to be covering. Wakayama’s latest feature is just another example of press release reporting.

Despite showing images of many empty chairs at the event, Wakayama still claimed the room was “packed.” This likely serves to manufacture urgency, creating the illusion of broad community opposition to the technology in hopes of pushing Tacoma to reconsider its use.

The event itself was sponsored by far-left groups like the Black Panther Party of Washington, the Institute for Black Justice, and Indivisible Tacoma. But you wouldn’t know that from the report — these organizations aren’t named, nor is there mention that Palmer, featured throughout the story, is a known activist. Without these details, casual viewers are left assuming she’s just a concerned community member objecting to ShotSpotter.

By omitting this information, KING 5 makes the event appear like some organic community pushback. In reality, the organizers are advancing their de-policing agenda — the very agenda that’s contributed to Tacoma’s crime crisis in the first place.

Even the title of the piece is misleading: “Tacoma residents voice concerns about gunshot detection pilot program during public forum.”

That’s a stretch, to say the least, considering it’s far-left organizations critical of police who orchestrated the panel. Wakayama doesn’t quote a single everyday community member in his report — just one panelist. He has no insight into how the broader community actually feels about this technology because he either didn’t talk to anyone in the community or they didn’t want to talk to him.

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ShotSpotter should be tested

There is reasonable criticism of ShotSpotter based on how some cities have used and abandoned the technology. But there have been some cities that have embraced the tech and sung its praises.

It would benefit Tacoma residents to ignore anti-police groups and the media members who shill on their behalf. They’re the very voices that influenced police policy in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement. What resulted was a city in need of the ShotSpotter to begin with.

ShotSpotter deserves a chance to help make Tacoma safe again. And if activists really wanted to help the black community, they’d stop pretending police are the problem. It’s not cops who are shooting black people.

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