After Jackson installed some listening devices as part of a trial aimed at detecting the location of gunfire, city leaders found that the program never got far enough off the ground to evaluate if the technology would aid in crime prevention. 

The Jackson City Council voted last week to end a contract with Atlanta-based Flock Safety, the company that provides the gunshot detection devices. Flock must now remove the devices that were installed in south Jackson as part of the city’s 180-day trial period.

The Jackson Police Department requested the council terminate the contract out of concern the city would be charged $250,000 for further use of the devices, according to documents in the city’s meeting agenda packet. 

But several snafus prevented the department from fully testing Flock’s devices, designed to use acoustic sensors and machine learning to detect the sound of gunshots and provide the police with an exact location of the shots in under 60 seconds. 

“We were told that they did not have any data,” Ward 7 Councilman Kevin Parkinson said.

A Flock representative referred all questions to JPD. In a statement, JPD spokesperson Tommie Brown said the technology performed as intended but that some devices had to be removed in response to resident concerns. 

“We were never able to deploy all the devices, so we were never able to get a full evaluation,” Brown said. 

Brown said 57 devices were installed, covering 1.5 square miles, out of a planned 216. He added that the devices were live and Flock collected the data, but he did not respond to a question about whether the company shared the data with the city.

The company and JPD had sought to install the devices on light poles, but Entergy wanted to charge the city $500 a pop, which JPD did not want to pay, multiple council members told Mississippi Today.

“We ought to be able to use those poles for listening devices if the city wanted to,” Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote told Mississippi Today. 

An Entergy spokesperson told Mississippi Today in an email that the utility may require cities to pay an upfront fee to install public safety equipment, such as cameras, license plate readers and gunshot detection systems, “to cover administrative and engineering costs, such as site visits and inspections to ensure the proposed location can accommodate the device.” 

Some devices, then, were placed on freestanding poles in residents’ lawns without their permission, several council members told Mississippi Today. They said they learned this from JPD Capt. Michael Outland during last week’s work session. Outland did not respond to an inquiry from Mississippi Today, and the council’s work sessions generally are not recorded. 

Foote said he thought the technology could be useful for south Jackson, a more sprawling part of the city where residents say they often hear gunshots and experience slow police response times. 

“You could drive around for hours,” he said.  

The city of Jackson also has a contract with Flock for license plate readers, as do other cities around the state, including Ocean Springs and Pontotoc. 

Similar crime-detecting technology has been criticized for violating civil liberties and for the accuracy of the machines, with some failing to distinguish between gunshots and fireworks. Cities across the country have recently cancelled contracts with similar companies, outlets have reported, citing the recording devices as a “Band-Aid,” not a solution, to crime. 

As part of the “Project Prove It” trial period, an order form in the council’s agenda packet shows the department had requested “Raven” devices to cover 3.5 miles of the city. When the council initially OK’d the contract with Flock earlier this year under the previous mayoral administration, then-Chief Joseph Wade said the devices would be installed in south Jackson, WLBT reported.

A picture of Flock’s “deployment tracker” that was included in the council’s agenda packet depicts seven south Jackson addresses where devices were placed near the McDowell Square Shopping Center, including the Fourth Episcopal District CME Church on Robinson Road. On Monday, a black pole carrying Flock’s Raven device was still stuck into the grass in front of the church’s street sign.

A few months ago, Beverly Dixon, the church secretary, said she pulled into work to see a man who did not appear to be a police officer installing the black pole. She didn’t know what it was until speaking to a Mississippi Today reporter. 

“I don’t ask any questions, because I consider this part dangerous,” she said. 

It’s not gunshots that worry Dixon, though – she says she never hears them. Instead, it is the homeless people who sleep on the church’s steps. Dixon said she calls the police, but the last time she did, she was stuck in her car on a rainy day for an hour waiting for them to respond. 

“They take their time,” she said. 

The Flock test period was supposed to begin at the date the first device was installed, which was Aug. 4, but JPD counted the 180-day grace period from the date the city signed the contract, April 23.

JPD said its partnership with Flock remains and the department will continue to evaluate the company’s devices for future use. 

“Our decision to pause the Flock Raven project reflects our commitment to balancing technological advancement with the concerns and expectations of our residents,” JPD interim Chief-Sheriff Tyree Jones said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with Flock Safety and will evaluate this system in the future as we work toward sustainable, community-driven public safety solutions.”

The Jackson City Council wants to try again with a different company when a new police chief is put in place, multiple council members told Mississippi Today. 

“Going forward, I think they got lessons learned,” Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley said of JPD. “We’ll still be dead set on getting those things in place.”

Lashia Brown-Thomas, the Ward 6 councilwoman and a former JPD officer, said in her experience, the police have a 50-50 chance of catching the perpetrators when they respond to a “shots fired” call. 

“By the time the officers get there, (the shooters) will be gone,” she said.