Shotspotter is a technology that, at least in theory, notifies the police when someone fires a gun. This triggers a response and, at least as it's billed, results in more arrests of violent criminals.

That sounds good, except for phrases like "in theory" and "as it's billed."

If you caught those, give yourself a cookie. Get one for me, too. I'm a little hungry.

The problem with Shotspotter is that, well, there's debate over whether it works as advertised. One of the big issues is that it's reportedly bad about false positives. 

Of course, that debate has led to a debate about keeping it, and there, things get...interesting.

From our sister site Hot Air:

When we last checked in on the fate of Chicago's ShotSpotter crime-fighting technology, there were some signs that a deal might be on the table that could see Mayor Brandon Johnson's efforts to remove the system from the city reversed. But I included an important caveat with the idea: maybe. A strong majority of the Aldermen on the City Council were in favor of a plan that would allow the Police Administrator to negotiate a new contract with ShotSpotter and a group of local business owners had offered to kick in $2.5 million to gain an extension to the contract. A headline this week in CBS News Chicago seemed to offer more hope, claiming that Johnson had agreed not to veto the new contract. But that turned out to be less than met the eye and the Mayor still plans to sink the deal. 

Mayor Brandon Johnson will not veto an ordinance that would have allowed the city's top cop to negotiate a new deal to revive Chicago's controversial gunshot detection program.

While Johnson said last month that he had "no choice" but to veto the ordinance that sought to reinstate the city's ShotSpotter program, a spokesman for the mayor's office said in an email Tuesday night that it was later "deemed unnecessary" to do so because the ordinance cannot be enforced.

"An attempt by the legislative body to compel the executive branch to enter into a contract with a specific contractor would violate the separation of powers. The authority to enter and administer contracts lies with the executive branch," a mayoral spokesperson said. "While the legislative branch has legislative authority, it cannot obligate the executive branch to execute a contract and certainly not under specific terms. The executive branch must retain discretion over matters such as contract terms, remuneration, and the duration of the agreement."

In other words, the Mayor plans to sink the plan using what amounts to a pocket veto. He will allow the Aldermen to vote on the new contract and allow it to go into place. But then he will simply choose not to honor the contract by claiming that the authority to establish such a contract and fund the agreement lies with the executive branch. There does not appear to be a clear path to challenge such a ruling, so ShotSpotter will remain shut down for the foreseeable future. Johnson claims to be looking at alternative technology to replace it, but no viable competitors have been identified with the same capabilities.

Of course, as noted, there are issues with the technology. The company claims a 97 percent accuracy of the technology, but that has never been verified by actual research. That was a marketing term.

And, unfortunately, there's the issue that many of the people taking issue with the technology are really more upset with how it was deployed. 

See, when they rolled this out, they stuck it in high-crime neighborhoods. After all, there's a cost to it and it doesn't make sense to deploy it in neighborhoods that never hear a gunshot except on television.

High-crime neighborhoods in Chicago, however, are mostly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

In theory, this shouldn't matter. The thing is, that phrase "in theory" already tells you that apparently, it does.

Some people think the deployment of it was racist. The mayor is among those, apparently. That's why this has been so controversial. It's also why I keep finding it hard to believe the media reporting that's critical of Shotspotter, though I'm also skeptical of technology that hasn't proven itself.

But the heart of this issue isn't whether Shotspotter works.

No, it's about how things are going down in Chicago. The Aldermen want it. The businesses want it. The mayor, however, doesn't and will use political trickery to make it happen.

I bet he likes to prattle on about "defending democracy," too.

He doesn't care about what elected officials decided. He's going to do what he wants to do.

It kind of makes me wonder if he knows Shotspotter works and that's the problem. But that would be a conspiracy theory and those have never panned out...except for all the times they did recently.

Of course, I have no evidence against Johnson, only some scummy actions on this particular issue that might benefit potential criminals but could also be more garden-variety scumminess than anything else.