The city of Schenectady will be rolling out gunshot detection technology. The Electric City is joining local cities like Troy and Pittsfield, Mass., that have experience with ShotSpotter.

Pittsfield police started using ShotSpotter in April 2017. Over the last two and a half years, they say it has helped fight gun violence. 

Police say about 31 percent of the gunfire in the city is solely being detected by this system — that means those were not reported by anyone. However, police say there are times where alerts turned up nothing.

For Troy police, that was one of the reasons they got rid of it. The city had ShotSpotter from 2009 to 2012 and did away with it because police say they didn't get much evidence in return. In addition, they say most of the community calls police when shots are fired.

“The triangulation method that was used, it didn’t always put us in the right spot either. So it just didn’t work out the way we had hoped,” said Deputy Chief Dan DeWolf of the Troy Police Department.

“It has captured incidents we normally wouldn’t have captured. We’ve made arrests, gotten guns off the street, recovered projectiles and gun casings,” said Lt. Gary Traversa of the Pittsfield Police Department.

As for Schenectady, officials are looking to have ShotSpotter operational by the end of this year or early next year.