In a 7-0 vote Tuesday night, the city council authorized the $350,000 of Uplands Oil money it allocated to the Long Beach Police Department in October 2011 for the acquisition of SST, Inc.’s acoustical gunfire-location technology ShotSpotter to be re-appropriated for police overtime costs.
According to the requesting memorandum, filed by 4th District Councilmember Patrick O’Donnell and Vice-Mayor Robert Garcia (who is also head of the Public Safety Committee, though no meeting of the committee was held regarding this issue), “At this time, the existing funds will not be used to purchase or subscribe to this type of program […] It is appropriate that the funds be utilized to further one-time public safety needs, as was the Council’s intention.”
There was no mention of the technology’s cost in the wording of the recommendation. But Chief Jim McDonnell told the council that, upon research conducted since the October 2011 allocation, it was found that “the amount of money set aside for gunshot locating was enough to only cover a small area of the city, perhaps the size of a council district.”
The results of the Long Beach Post‘s request for public records indicates there has been no written communication by the Police Department or the City regarding ShotSpotter since January 7, and no record of who authorized the $350,000 not to be used to acquire ShotSpotter, the specific purpose for which the council made the allocation.
What records do indicate is that sometime in late 2011 there was contention between an SST salesperson—apparently Brad Driggers, at the time SST’s director of the West Region—and the LBPD.
In an October 25, 2011 e-mail to Chief McDonnell, SST Senior Vice-President of Sales Gregg Rowland apologizes “that this got off on the wrong foot and […] for the way my sales person handled this”—apparently the same matter referenced in an October 6 e-mail from Driggers to McDonnell.
“I’d like to again apologize for the difficult situation and put us back on a productive footing,” Driggers wrote. “After being road blocked over and over, I did not feel I had any alternative but to adapt to the situation and move the ShotSpotter Gunfire Reduction program forward.”
Cost as a potential rationale for not acquiring ShotSpotter is mentioned for the first—and only—time in the documents provided to the Post on November 15, 2011, in an e-mail sent to multiple LBPD employees by LBPD Administrative Bureau Chief Braden Phillips, in which he documents his discussion that day with Bill Pearl, publisher of LBReport.
“I told [Pearl] that, although the Department has been impressed with the technology and recognizes the potential benefits of an installation in Long Beach, we have not yet developed a specific set of project specifications for ShotSpotter […],” Phillips wrote. “We know that the technology is expensive to acquire and also expensive to operate and maintain annually. […] I told him the cost per square mile of coverage, based on the briefing we received last year, was roughly $300,000.”[1]
Two days later, in an e-mail to McDonnell, Phillips indicates some displeasure with SST, based on an LBReport follow-up article on the question of why ShotSpotter had yet to be deployed. In that follow-up article, SST Vice-President of Marketing Lydia Barrett provided LBReport with a series of bullet points concerning the history of SST’s negotiations with the City of Long Beach; and the benefits that ShotSpotter could bring to the city.
“Our ‘friends’ at ShotSpotter seem to enjoy ‘negotiating’ their business deals in an odd way…,” Phillips writes.
In a January 7, 2012, e-mail to McDonnell, SST CEO Ralph Clark references a meeting held the previous day.
“I appreciated the opportunity to meet with you in person and directly hear from you on your frustrations of interacting with our company,” wrote Clark, referencing the “unfortunate early interaction” between Driggers and City officials. “We have given Brad direct feedback on the matter and instructed him not to engage in Long Beach in any capacity.”
Clark also refers to SST’s “new managed services and pricing model” that made SST “a more attractive option to which you might have been previously exposed to.”
Late last month SST’s Gregg Rowland told the Post that SST “provided [the City] with a budgetary cost with an opportunity for them to appropriately size the service to their budget. […] And we also provided them with many opportunities to negotiate to the size of their budget. And none of those happened. […] And nobody has explained why or what or anything else.”
The Post‘s copy of Clark’s January 7 e-mail to McDonnell indicates that a reply was sent to Clark, although Clark’s e-mail is the most recent document provided by the City.
The Post’s request for public records was for all ShotSpotter/SST-related documents between October 2011 and September 2012.
Click here to view our policies covering the Long Beach city council.
[1] Phillips also notes that Pearl told him “he strongly supports the use of technology to help our Officers locate shooting sites, and would like to see us expedite the process, so we can get ShotSpotter on line.”