Wilmington’s Other Surveillance Network

Get this part right and you keep your credibility: the microphones on Wilmington’s poles are not Flock. They are ShotSpotter, made by a company called SoundThinking (formerly SST, Inc.). Flock makes license-plate cameras. SoundThinking makes acoustic gunshot sensors. Two different companies, two different contracts, two different sets of officials who answer for them. Conflating the two is exactly the kind of mistake that lets the whole conversation get waved away — so let’s be precise.

What Wilmington actually has

The Wilmington Police Department has run ShotSpotter since 2011, making our city one of the earliest adopters in the state. (SoundThinking press release.) The system is a network of acoustic sensors — microphones — mounted around the city that listen for the sound of gunfire, triangulate a location, and alert police, with audio clips reviewed by the company’s analysts before dispatch. According to a city spokesperson, the contract runs about $433,000 a year and covers roughly six square miles, concentrated downtown. (The Assembly.) Wilmington is one of six North Carolina cities that have used it — alongside Fayetteville, New Bern, Rocky Mount, Greenville, and Goldsboro.

None of that arrived through a public vote on surveillance. It arrived as a line item in a police budget. That is the throughline with Flock: always-on monitoring of public space, approved quietly, renewed on autopilot, rarely examined.

The honest case for it — and the evidence against

We’ll give the fair version first. Supporters argue ShotSpotter notifies police about gunfire that no one calls in, and a 2024 Duke University study presented to the Durham City Council did find the system detected more shootings than 911 calls alone. (The Duke Chronicle.) If the question were only “does it hear gunshots,” the answer would be a qualified yes.

But the harder question — does it reduce gun violence or help solve those crimes — keeps coming back the wrong way for the company:

• That same Duke study found no evidence it brought down gun violence overall. (WUNC.)
• A peer-reviewed study of Chicago and Kansas City found ShotSpotter did not reduce fatal or non-fatal shootings and did not increase the rate at which those shootings were solved. (Policing Insight.)
• A study by the MacArthur Justice Center found that over roughly 21 months in Chicago, about 89% of ShotSpotter alerts turned up no gun crime, generating tens of thousands of dead-end police deployments — concentrated in Black and Latino neighborhoods. (MacArthur Justice Center.)

Chicago spent roughly $49 million on ShotSpotter and ended the contract in 2024, citing cost, racial-equity concerns, and thin evidence it worked. (WTTW.) The company disputes these analyses — it’s entitled to, and residents are entitled to see Wilmington’s own numbers before the next renewal.

Durham: a North Carolina city already said no

We don’t have to look far for the model. Durham ran a one-year ShotSpotter pilot and, in March 2024, the City Council voted 4–2 against a new three-year, roughly $650,000 contract. (WRAL.) Residents packed the chamber. Council members pointed to the cost, the lack of proof it reduced violence, and the fact that the sensors were concentrated in Black and brown neighborhoods. A North Carolina city studied this exact technology, listened to its residents, and walked away.

The question you raised: can they record audio at all?

This is where the gunshot sensors and the Flock debate meet. ShotSpotter’s microphones are designed to capture gunfire — but acoustic sensors capture human voices at least some of the time, and that has already mattered in court. In one California case, prosecutors introduced voice audio captured by a gunshot sensor as evidence; a Massachusetts court refused to admit similar recordings, holding they were an unlawful interception of “oral communication.” (EFF — Gunshot Detection.)

North Carolina is a one-party-consent state under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-287 — but that protects only an “oral communication” the speaker reasonably expected wasn’t being intercepted, and the one-party exception requires a party to the conversation to consent. A fixed microphone recording two people near a sensor has no consenting party, and the government isn’t a party to their talk. So if a protected conversation is captured, one-party consent may provide no cover at all. North Carolina’s appellate courts haven’t squarely resolved what that means for an always-listening sensor that retains audio. It is an open, serious question — and a fair thing to ask the City to answer before it signs again.

Same principle as Flock: a public space monitored around the clock, by a private company, without a warrant and without a vote.

What we’re asking

Not “ignore gun violence.” We’re asking Wilmington to hold its own surveillance to a basic standard of proof and transparency before spending another $433,000:

• Publish Wilmington’s ShotSpotter data: alerts per year, how many led to a confirmed shooting, how many to an arrest or prosecution, and the cost per confirmed case.
• Disclose what happens to the audio — how long clips are retained, who can access them, and whether any captured voices have ever been used as evidence.
• Answer the wiretap question on the record before the next renewal.

The cameras and the microphones come from different companies. The demand is the same: show us it works, show us what it costs us in privacy, and let us decide in the open.

This article is general information about North Carolina and federal law and public policy, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. ShotSpotter and SoundThinking are products of SoundThinking, Inc., a company unaffiliated with Flock Safety. The legality of audio capture by automated sensors is unsettled and fact-specific. Consult a licensed North Carolina attorney about any particular situation.