Police using software to predict crimes, portable fingerprint scanners, and microphones positioned around a city to detect gunshots and triangulate their location

[Jenna]

A map of a city is marked up with small red squares, each indicating a 500-by-500-foot zone where crimes are likely to take place next. A heat-map mode shows even more precisely where cars may be stolen, houses robbed, people mugged.
The program is called PredPol, and it calculates its forecasts based on times and locations of previous crimes, combined with sociological information about criminal behavior and patterns. The technology has been beta tested in the Santa Cruz, California police department for the past year, and in an L.A. police precinct for the past six months, with promising results.

In Southern Florida, many police departments are using portable fingerprint scanners to ID suspects and bring up any outstanding warrants on the spot. The smartphone-sized devices cost $2,500 apiece.
A ShotSpotter system uses microphones positioned around a city to detect gunshots and triangulate their location within 40 to 50 feet. A human at ShotSpotter's headquarters confirms if it's a gunshot and alerts the police. The system starts at $40,000 for every square mile of coverage.

More here: Police embracing tech that predicts crimes - CNN.com

[bayern]

Due to budget shortfalls, the purchase of most electronic equipment and devises are being cut back or deferred. More creative departments are resorting to older tried and true technology:
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[Five-0]

What could possibly go wrong?

[MRBenoit]

My department (Springfield, MA) uses the shotspotter system. the Beta version was actually way better than the current one we use as the current one does not appear to be compliant with our cruiser laptops and freezes the whole computer when you use it. It was nice because the laptop would sound when an activation took place and you could pull up the map on the computer and see how many shots fired, the location and if they were moving/what speed (drive by). You could also listen to the actual shots fired and determine for yourself if they were gun shots, fireworks or some other loud activation. You would be enroute to a shooting in seconds rather than minutes and on many occasions we have taken the suspect into custody as they fled the scene. We still use it but we now have to wait for dispatch to confirm gunshot or not and then dispatch you (anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes after the activation).