[splintercell]

What's the problem with false positives in this case?

I'm pretty sure, "don't bother with this technology which reports shots to the cops, because it has false positives" is a very weak argument.

[sokoloff]

If the false positive rate is 5%, it’s probably not much of a problem in terms of the overall balance of effectiveness.

If the false positive rate is 95%, it’s pretty obviously going to be a diversion of police resources from whatever else they could be doing if not responding to zero-value alerts.

[fasthands9]

https://www.edgewortheconomics.com/experience-independent-au...

This claims the false positive rate is under 3%. It's based on Shotspotter's statistics and "independent audit" statistics.

Not sure how trustworthy either is, but without better stats from anywhere else I have no reason to doubt the claim the false positive is pretty low.

Seems like even if false positive rate was at 50% it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Cities have police on patrol at all times anyway - it would just mean sending someone to drive 5 minutes away to see if there is visible a disturbance instead of them driving around the area they were currently randomly patrolling.

[enobrev]

If police show up to your family residence with guns drawn for a false positive, you might have a different perspective.