(Oct. 31) – Sikeston will soon have a gunshot detection system in place.

On Monday, Sikeston City Council approved the ShotSpotter program for Sikeston. Sikeston Department of Public Safety recently was awarded the BJA FY23 Rural and Small Department Violent Crime Reduction Grant which will cover the cost of the program for three years.

Sikeston DPS Director Jim McMillen said it is basically a gunshot detection system.

“If a weapon is fired in the city limits it will send us a notification with the location of where that occurred so we can get there faster and attend to any victims, locate, and identify any witnesses and collect any evidence,” McMillen said. “It should enhance our abilities to find these scenes of these shootings that sometimes go unreported.”

McMillen added that according to ShotSpotter roughly 70% of shots fired in the US are not called in for various reasons.

If a gunshot is fired within the target area, the sound is detected by a microphone and mounted in various locations of the target area. An alert is then sent to the gunshot detection operations center for review and verification. Once the gunshot is verified, an alert is sent to Sikeston DPS communications, the officers data terminal and even their smart phone if desired.

The alert consists of a pin drop location on Google Maps with the exact location, the number of shots fired and a recording of the gunshots within less than one minute. Officers are then able to respond to the exact location where the gunshots were fired.

ShotSpotter covers approximately two square miles.

“It covers basically from about Dudley Park down to Virginia from the high school to the west city limits, roughly,” McMillen said. “They tailor it to the residential areas where we see the most shot fired calls.”

He added that ShotSpotter bases the area off the last 20 months of shots fired calls the city has had with assaults, shootings, and homicides.

The cost of the service is $99,000 per year and the grant will pay for the first three years. There is no financial obligation to continue with the ShotSpotter technology or program after three years. The cost covers installation, monitoring, data analysis as well as expert court room testimony in relation to violent gun crime.