EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. — It happened moments after a police sergeant blasted a shot into a sand-filled barrel to test this city's expanded gunfire tracking system.
Witnesses suddenly heard "Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!"
Those gunshots were real. A flashing red "multiple shots" alert and an address appeared on a nearby laptop, and officers quickly located a 28-year-old man who had been shot by a masked man.
He survived. "He's lucky," Capt. Carl Estelle said.
East Palo Alto is the first U.S. city completely wired with ShotSpotter, a system of strategically placed acoustic sensors linked to a computer designed to help police locate gunfire in high-crime areas, but the technology is spreading. Thirty-six cities across America are now using ShotSpotter — triple the number two years ago.
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Cash-strapped police departments are receiving millions in federal funds to buy the system, despite debate over whether it effectively fights crime. And now cities such as Indianapolis and Trenton, N.J., hope to use federal stimulus money to pay for ShotSpotter.
Officials from the Mountain View, Calif.-based company say the technology has helped cities reduce gunfire rates by 60 percent to 80 percent and violent crime by 40 percent. They say the system detects dozens of gunfire incidents daily in 114 square miles inhabited by more than 774,000 people in cities such as Boston and Chicago.
"Every city that has it tells me when they go to where the dot is, they find evidence," said Gregg Rowland, ShotSpotter's senior vice president.
But a former Boston police lieutenant, Thomas Nolan, questions whether the money spent on the technology could better be used to hire more police. "The cops I talk to on the street think ShotSpotter is a joke," said Nolan, associate criminal justice professor at Boston University.
A square-mile of ShotSpotter coverage can cost from $200,000 to $250,000.
Supporters say the system can help police respond rapidly.
"If someone is severely shot, those critical seconds or minutes could be the difference between life and death," said Rochester, N.Y., Mayor Robert Duffy, a former police chief and chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Criminal and Social Justice Committee.
The largest ShotSpotter installation is in Washington, D.C., where it covers 16 square miles. Besides locating gunshots, the system also proved two off-duty D.C. officers did not fire first when they killed a 14-year-old boy in 2007.
In Minneapolis, the technology helped officers find this year's first homicide victim in subzero temperatures.
