It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm WBSY constant some news radio.
I am indeed Ben Parker, and I am indeed filling in for Dan Ray on Night's Side this evening. It's a one and done. Tonight's the only night. So if you like what you're here, then I guess write the management. If you don't like what you're here, well, at the end of the night, it'll be over. I wanted to bring one more thing up real quickly before we move on here, and I didn't get to it with Senator Oberaker from New York. I spoke to someone earlier today.
But I've also brought this up many times before when it comes to politics and getting things done right, we're in this stalemate sometimes and obviously a society where there's just a lot of anger between people on one side of the aisle and the other side of the aisle, and there's lightning Rod issues says, I'll call them, and I'm not going to just list them off. You know what they are? The ones who are people really get
upset about them. I wonder why, and I'm sure there's a reason, and somebody may bring it up later as we go through the evening or as we talk to other people tonight. But this is what I always wondered. Look, there's plenty of stuff we don't agree on. That's known. But there's stuff that we can't agree on, right whether it has to do with taxes or helping people or this that or the other thing, it doesn't matter what it is. But there's a lot of stuff that we
can agree on. Leave the nasty stuff, the lightning rod issues off to the side. I'm not saying ignore them, but leave them off to the side. Solve the problems we can find solutions to easily, or at least easier, and then maybe in the time that we're negotiating about the things we can find agreement with, maybe we find ways to agree or understand the other side for those other issues they really anger causing issues. All Right, That's
all I want to say. I just why do we have to put everything in the freezer and say, well, I'm not going to talk to you about this, so I'm not going to talk you about anything. I just and it can happens from both sides, so it's I'm not picking on anybody specifically, but I just let's solve the things we can solve, and then we can move on to the things we didn't solve in the first place. Never mind nine oh nine. It is Tuesday night, Ben Parker filling in for Dan Ray on nights side. We're
gonna switch gears up a little bit here. There was some legislation about a curbing housing affordability or taking control of housing affordability. Everybody knows, and it's a deal in every state right around here, Sure there's a more expensive housing. So the problem with housing is a lot bigger of a problem in and around Boston. Let's say in New York. I would guess in San Francisco. You just named the
places where it's the most expensive. Right, But the governor Heally today signed a borrowing bill, a five point two billion dollar borrowing bill that was passed by the legislature and is aimed at trying to put an end, or at least slow down the problems with housing in the Commonwealth. So we are talking to someone who knows a little bit about housing. Let me see if I can say this all in one breath. Massachusetts Housing and Livable Communities
Secretary at Augustus joins us. Can I just call you the housing secretaries Okay.
Oh, I've been called worth feel free, all right.
So this is something that the governor wanted, the legislature had tossed around, and obviously, as with anything, there was a bit of back and forth and over and under and all of that. But finally the deal got done. And so now it's done. Now to the layman who's not Housing secretary, what does this mean to the commonwealth? And and I guess maybe even more importantly is what will it mean to the commonwealth?
Well, first, thanks for having me, Ben, I appreciate it. It is a big day in terms of housing production in Massachusetts by having Governor Haley signed the Affordable Homes Act today. There's kind of two elements to it. As you mentioned, this five point two billion dollars worth of borrowing that will happen over the next five years, and that really supports most of the capital programs that we use to build affordable housing, subsidize the building of affordable housing,
or capital improvements to our public housing. This is one of the only states that has forty three thousand units of state owned public housing. That's across two hundred and
forty one cities and towns of Massachusetts. Some of it is for elderly and disabled folks, some of it is for families, all of it is for folks who are often very low income, sometimes even below thirty percent of area median income, so very very low income folks who in this housing market, if we didn't have those public housing units online, many of them would probably be experiencing homelessness.
So we really want to make sure we preserve the public housing that we currently have and make it more habitable, more healthy, more updated, and make sure we keep that online. And then there are forty nine policy changes that are part of this bill, some of which accessory dwelling units.
They call them in law apartments sometimes where if you're single family property owner, you now as of right, can add a basement apartment and an attict department above your garage, and sometimes it's a family member that lives there, and sometimes you just rented out to bring in a little extra income. Other states have done that. It's created thousands of units at no cost to the state, and so that was part of the bill that the governors signed today.
So is a combination of dollars as well as policy changes. The net goal is about forty five thousand units of housing will be built over the next five years that otherwise wouldn't be built, and about twenty seven thousand units of housing will be preserved or improved that otherwise might have been in Jeopany.
Now this is a bond bill, at least a portion of it. There is this bond bill, So we're basically taking a mortgage to help with housing costs.
Every five years forever the Borrows reauthorizes capital programs. We do it for environmental things, we do it for education, school buildings, higher education, dams and bridges, and we do it for housing. And so the five year cycle was up. This is the biggest authorization the governor file the four point one billion dollar bills that legislature added to it. I think understanding the crisis that we're experiencing across the state.
Anybody who's tried to buy a first time anybody that you know who's a first time home buyer probably tells you that they've gone to many open houses and come up short. They've put in offers, often over asking, sometimes waving home inspections and all sorts of things just to try to get that opportunity to purchase a home and still aren't able to do it because of the shortage of inventory, and so this bill was really designed to create more supply. We know it's basically if you're oil
it all down. It's a supply demand issue. There's too few units of housing, rental or ownership opportunities for the demand that's up there.
There's certainly let's to unpacked with this at Augustus, who's the Housing Secretary of Massachusetts, joining us about this bill signed by the governor today, And you mentioned supplying demand, And obviously I think anybody who even took basic economics knows what supply and demand is and means. This is a question that I'm going to ask because because I'm curious about it. If you have more supply, then the
price of the goes down. People go So if you have as we sit right now, right housing prices are very high. And Mary and Joanne or Mary and Joe and Mary and Mark all just bought houses at the high end of the market here right, so six seven, eight hundred thousand dollars whatever they bought the house for. Now, if more supply comes online, then theoretically the prices will go down. Those couples And what do you say, I guess to someone who says, who wait, wait a second,
there's more supply now than these when I bought. Now, I'm going to get I'm gonna get stuck on the other end of my mortgage. Is that something that people should worry about or is that just not something that is going to really be a big problem.
I honestly don't think that's going to be a big problem. Maybe prices don't go up as fast as they've been going up. But if any of those folks that you talked about purchase the house and then they go to sell it twenty or thirty years later, I'm sure that house will appreciate in value and they will have built up quite a bit of equity over the course of
those twenty or thirty years they own the home. The question is, can you know, the kid who's graduating from college today in Massachusetts, can they afford to buy a home? And if they can't, we're finding we're losing people to other states. You know, we lost about twenty thousand popular over the last few years, most of the twenty five
to thirty six year old demographic. Those are the folks who are just getting out of school, starting their careers, starting their families and quite honestly, are finding themselves priced out of the real estate market in the greater Boston area and even beyond, And so we're not going to be able to compete as a state as the companies and businesses that look to locate here to grow here look for employees, and if they say to their employees, hey,
you're going to have to spend fifty percent of your income on housing, but if you take a job in North Carolina or somewhere else, you're going to spend thirty percent. Too often we're losing those talented workforce and that makes us less competitive as a state. Not to mention people who are on the other end of the economic equation. You know, senior citizens who are on fixed incomes. Maybe they rent, maybe they're in a three family, three family gets sold. Somebody says, hey, I can get way more
than fifteen hundred dollars a month. It's now twenty four hundred dollars a month, but you're living on a fixed income. We're seeing a lot of senior citizens be displaced because
of the really rapid increases in housing costs. So I think we can create more supply that gives more power to the buyer and to the renter and takes a little bit more of the power dynamic that's currently in place in our housing ecosystem and create a little more equilibrium so that if somebody is offering a property rental or sale that's way too high, there's somebody down the road that you can take your business to. Right now, there's nobody down the road to take your business too.
That's the problem.
Massachusetts Housing Secretary at Augustus joining us. So the Governor today signing a bill to help with housing issues in the Commonwealth, will continue to talk about that and ask some more questions about what this means for you and me and everyone else involved as we continue on nights Side. Ben Parker's sitting in for Dan Ray tonight on WBZ.
Now. Back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
This is all about unlocking housing right because everywhere we go, people are paying too much, or they can't afford rent, they can't afford a down payment, seniors can't afford to downsize.
That is Governor Mora Heally as she put her signature on a housing bill today that is aimed at helping invest in housing in Massachusetts. In fact, it's the Affordable Homes Act, the largest investment of its kind in the Commonwealth, and with us tonight is the Housing Secretary. It's actually housing in Liverpool Communities Secretary Ed Augustus and welcome back and listen. I know that the last time we spoke was when you were in the City of Worcester doing
your uh, your your city manager job. So it's been a while and you switched jobs and everything.
Yeah. No, I had the great honor to service City manager of Worcester for nine years. And you know, Worcester is a place I was born and raised and a place that really has come a long way in recent years, you know, positioned itself for the knowledge based economy. We've
got nine colleges and universities there. Most people don't realize thirty five thousand college students a year go through the great colleges in Worcester, a big life science of presence and now home to the Worster Red Sox, the Triple A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, which has brought a lot of life and energy and a lot of visitors to Worcester into the Canal District.
I think you officially have to say the WU socks, don't you wat. And by the way, all those things that you mentioned about Worcester, and I'm a Central Mass guy at Northern Central Masters, where I grew up and still live, so I'm familiar obviously with Worcester. But even with all the things you just mentioned, all the colleges, all the places that people can work, the WU socks and all of that, housing is still a problem there too,
as it is all across the state. Now me saying that, I want to ask you this question when you look at this bill, when you look at the help that's coming, and I know sometimes people will say, well, what about us, what about my town? What about my city? Is this something? Because people live all across the state, as you know, and people have trouble living and affording it all across the state. Is this uniform in terms of how it's going to help people from the Cape to Western Master,
Eastern Master, Central Mass, from Worcester to Lemonster. Is it everybody going to get the same help here?
Well, there really is an array of different programs within this bill that is designed to meet the unique needs of different communities around the state. Worcester like Fitchburg and Lemonster and Pittsfield and Springfield and Fall River and New Bedford. Those are our gateway cities, and there's programs within this bill that really help to support our gateway cities which
have unique opportunities but sometimes unique challenges. This bill also creates, for the first time ever something called a seasonal Communities designation, and that particularly is going to apply to the communities on the Cape, the Islands, and some of the towns up in Berkshires that might see their population triple during the summer months and have a lot of second or
third home owners in those communities will only come. They own the home year round, but they only stay there for a few months of the year or a few weekends here and there, and it really changes the housing
dynamic in that community. The people who have to, you know, make those towns work, the DPW employees, the school teachers, the folks who work in the hospitality industry, which is the lifeblood of all of these tourist communities, are finding that they don't have a place for that that workforce to live. Fifty percent of the Cape's workforce lives off
of the Cape. Think about how challenging that is particularly, you go further up the cape to get people who are able and willing to make that drive every day to fill those jobs, and too often we're seeing that they're not able to do that and we're having jobs not be filmed. The issues on the islands are unique but more pronounced in terms of some of the challenges that they have, whether it be running the hospitals on the two islands or the other kind of essential services
that allow everybody else to enjoy these amazing places. So there's some unique tools in this bill for those seasonal communities to help them. So they really are very tailored and nuanced programs of design to meet the unique challenges and the unique needs of different communities across the stace.
I want to ask this question of you, Secretary, and it's probably an unfair question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway because I think it needs to be at least discussed, and maybe it's something you have discussed in your job role. So we've been dealing with housing prices through the roof for a long time. We've been dealing with housing shortages for a long time. We've been dealing with homelessness for
a long time. We've been dealing with all these housing related issues for a long time, not just here, all across the country. But so here's the question. If we're doing stuff about them all the time, and we've been dealing with them for a long time, how have we not solved these problems yet? I mean, it's probably a more difficult thing to answer than my question was to ask. But it just seems like, hey, we've been doing this for a long time. Shouldn't we have fixed it by now? Yeah?
I mean, I think part of it. There's a couple of things that are at work, I think that have made this housing crisis that much more pronounced. One is something that's been happening for decades, quite honestly, and that is many local comunities have made it very difficult to
build housing. They've created zoning that doesn't allow many types of housing, or requires such large plots of land for a single family home that it doesn't allow for the more dense housing that often is necessary, particularly near our transit notes. That's what the NBCTA Communities Act is really about, is removing some of those local barriers that have historically existed to create more houses. So I think that's one issue, and that's been decades in the works. Post pandemic, we
saw inflation hit a lot of different sectors. Construction materials, the basic elements of building a home, whether it be the wood or the steel, depending on how high the building is if it's an apartment building, the other physical elements saw the prices go up, and even though inflation has come down, those prices have not come down, so that has made building housing more expensive. And then interest rates.
You think about it, four years ago, you had the ability to get a mortgage maybe at three percent, maybe at two and a half percent, fairly cheap money. Now you're looking at seven or eight percent interest rate. So there's a lot of folks who may want to move. Maybe it's time to downsize. The kids have grown up and moved away. You want to get a smaller place, but you're worried about, you know, trading in a three percent mortgage for seven or eight percent mortgage.
Now.
Hopefully there's some signals that maybe interest rates will start coming down in the near future, and I think as that happened, that will be wind at our back in terms of housing production. Because every time the interest rates come down or go up, one percentage point. It has a big impact on the production of housing.
Right, this Housing Secretary Ed Augustus joining us talking about this housing bill that was signed by the governor today. Appreciate you taking the time. I mean, I know we could do an entire week long series on housing because it's such a big issue around these parts. But I appreciate you kind of breaking down some of the stuff for us and joining us this Stevening on nightside.
Thanks for having me. Ben, appreciate it being with you, all.
Right, Thanks a lot, Central mass guy's got to stay together, you know that. All that is Ed Augustus, Woroster City manager for a long time. I grew up in Worcester and now he's the Housing Secretary of Massachusetts. Have you ever heard Have you ever heard? Of course you have? The shot spotter gun shot detection system seems like a great idea. Right, everybody's on board with this, Right, the shots ring out and the cops can go and respond
to it. Maybe not quite that simple. We've got a little bit of a controversy around the shot spotter gunshot detection system. Of course, it's only a controversy among those who have made it that way. We'll talk about that coming up with you on here Nightside on WBZ. Ben Parker infandam right.
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
All right, welcome back to Night's Side, Ben Parker filling in for Dan Ray tonight. And we've been having a whole lot of guests on a little bit of politics, a little bit of housing. Now we're going to talk a little bit about crime. And I'm gonna be honest with you. I always thought this was a pretty good system. Now, as a guy who does news and for those who don't know, I do news here on WBZ from two
to six every weekday afternoon. Make sure you tune in and catch the news, and don't forget to download the iHeartRadio apps. You can take us with you wherever you go. Now, we hear in the news here about police responding to a shooting, and a lot of times, or at least sometimes in various cities, they respond to those shootings because of the shot Spotter gunshot detection system. Boston has it, and so do many other cities in Massachusetts and across
the country. Now, there's been some scrutiny lately of that activation of the shot we'll get into a little bit of why we as we come up. But we have a couple of people tonight who are going to talk to us about this system. One of them happens to be the CEO of Shot Spotter himself, Ralph Clark. First of all, Ralph, thank you for joining Nightside this evening.
Thank you very much for having me.
And another is someone who is familiar, certainly his name should be to people in Boston. He is from Boston. He was the police commissioner in Boston. Also in New York City, he was the chief of the LA Police Department. He's been all over the place and he joins us tonight, Bill Bratton. Bill, thanks for joining us.
Eating good to be back in Boston once again.
I want to ask. I want to start with Bill only because your police background and obviously when something happens, in this particular case, a shooting, you want to be able to get as police officers to wherever that shooting was asap, not only for finding any victims of the shooting, but to collect evidence and perhaps get the purp Me and as a guy who's had Shot Spotter as part of our news stories, what's wrong with that?
There's a fourth element that adds to that combination, and that's to assure the public that we care about crime in their neighborhoods. In this particular instance, in terms of shots being fired in the neighborhood, whether there's an actual victim of the shooting. That in cities around the country to eighty percent of shots fired, I never reported, never
called into nine one one. An amazing statistic that people in certain neighborhoods are certain cities is so commonplace that they'll stop calling or they assume somebody else is going to call. And that figure just was flabagast when I first saw that as a chief of police. The idea that you assume shotsify it, they're going to call nine one one, but they don't. What this technology does. It
detects the shots being fired instantly. It also identifies the caliber of the weapon firing the shots, So is it an AI fifteen rifle, is it the smaller Cali king a gangun It also detects the number of rounds, which is very important information to the responding police. Are they responding to a single gun shot, are they responding to thirty or forty gun shots in a rapid succession? This technology is it is so useful to police, so beneficial
to the community. I'm flabbergasted that any politician would be opposed to its use, its implementation. Yet in this state, the two senators in Massachusetts I'm opposed the shots far They feel it's a technology that is not beneficial to the citizens of the state. I just shake my head. I just don't understand it.
And Bill, Bill is talking about By the way, and you may have seen this reported in the in the media that there was a letter sent by four members of Congress, including Senators Marking and Warren, that basically talked about the shot spotter not being accurate for starters and then being utilized or used in racially biased ways. And I want to bring in the CEO of Shots of Spotters,
Ralph Clark. Now you explain this to me. I'm just asking the question, how is technology that identifies a gunshot racially biased?
Well, the fact is that it isn't racially biased. It is a technology that's designed to detect, locate, and alert on instances of gunfire where we know the traditional nine one one system is effectively broken for these vulnerable communities when it relates to gun violence, I think, as Commissioner Bratton stated, you know, eighty to ninety percent of criminal gunfire goes unreported in these communities. And that's really interesting
to me. I think, you know it's Bill said, you know, he was flabbergacid by it, and you ask the questions like, well, why isn't it that people call UH?
Or why is it.
That people don't call nine one one when they hear gunshots? And we attribute that to the four rs? I mean, it's like, do I recognize it as gunfire? Am I concerned about retribution? I don't want to be a snitch and then have the perpetrators come to my house and potentially put me in harm's way. Redundancy, Hey, somebody else are going to someone else is going to call, right one of my neighbors are going to call. And the saddest one to me is the issue of resignation. We're
just resigned to this is the way it is. And to me flabbergasting that people would not support the idea of enabling first responders and law enforcement to come to areas where guns have been fired because what we know is this, I would be willing to guarantee you and I've spent two years I went to grad school in Boston. If a gun is fired in Cambridge near Harvard Business School, I can tell you people are gonna call and there's
going to be a response. And so my question to the critics is, if a gun's fired in Dorchester, Jamaica, planes or Roxbury, don't those residents deserve the same type of care in response. And there's nothing racist about that. That's anti racist in my opinion.
Yeah, you know, it's also interesting and we've been this has been hammered home so many times, especially since September eleventh, But you know, see something, say something? What about hear something say something? Wouldn't it make sense? I mean, maybe I'm just talking from a different upbringing than other people, but if you hear something that sounds like a gunshot, I think, I think, and Commissioner you can answer this.
Most police departments would rather you call and be on the safe side than go maybe it was a car backfiring.
Exactly. And the point that we should really drive home is that even though in ten to thirteen, ten to fifteen percent of instances that there is a victim or that there is a perpetrator still on the scene, when the police arrive, or that there is evidence recovered the gun or shell casings, even though on only fifteen percent of the time by the time the police get there, do they find evidence, if you will, if there was actually a shooting, the evidence of the shooting is in
fact the gun shot detection system itself that eighty five ninety percent of the time it'll detect accurately that a shot on many shots in some instances have been fired. This idea of racial act that the idea that is racially biased. I might point out the boarder I probably serve on the bord of directors of shots bottom. Ralph Clark Ukon sym Ralph Clark is African American. Our border directors. Half of our border directors a minority. Half of our
border directors are women. One of our border directors is the president of the National Urban League, former mayor of New Orleans. So these are people that are very racially sensitive and concerned about what's happening in minority communities, in particular because the reality of crime and violent crime is it has a phenomenally significant impact in the poor minority
neighborhoods of our cities in our country. In the irony of our two senators here in Massachusetts and other politicians around the country in the ACLU, advocating that somehow or another this system is racial biased is abserved because the idea is it is intended to help save minority lives, Because where is most serious violent crime occurring in minority neighborhoods?
The fact of life, fifty years ago, when I joined the Boston Police Department, most of the violent crime, most of the shootings, most of the murders occurred in Boston, in Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury. Today, fifty years later, thank god, there is much less violence. But where do most of the shootings, murders, and violent crime occur in Boston in those same neighborhoods that, fifty years later are still bind
lige minority. So the idea that the system is somehow and other biased against minorities, it is intended to save minority lives, and it does. And let me make the point out one example of that, and this occurs repeatedly.
Police get to the.
Seeing very quickly because of the nine to one to one notification and on occasion, should we find a shooting victim in that shooting victim, they will be able to treat immediately. They carry traumatis now, and frequently because of the grievous injury, they will push that victim in a police car and get them to the hospital. Why because if they don't get that person in the hospital quickly,
they're going to bleed out and die. So the way it works, nine to one, one is notified by the police apartment to send an ambulance, but the ambulance is going to come five minutes after the police have already on the scene. So we're seeing repeatedly where police are now encouraged to take the victims themselves to the hospital because when that three minutes it takes the ambulance to get there after the police have already by thanks to
short spot them. That person's don't bleed out, that person's going to die. So there's been a study that's been done that pretty conclusively proves that fact.
You guys are good to take a quick phone call here, certainly, all right, we got Andy and Merrin Mack. Let's let's see what Andy's up to. Good evening, Andy, welcome to Night's side.
Hey, good evening, everyone. I appreciate taking the call.
What do you got for a question?
I just want.
I just uh, I guess I got two things. The one thing was I was in the service and we had a system called I think it was a boomerang that's located various reports, uh, mainly from the small arms fire UH in a.
Three you know, fear and SI degree matter.
I'm guessing it's something similar with this technology.
With UH, I don't know. I think we think we might have lost Andy. But are you familiar either one of you then with what he was trying to refer to the military's version of this, Yeah.
There's there is a system. There was a system called boomerang, which was an anti sniper technology that would often be you'd have a sensor attached to humby and it could tell if there's a sniper fire toward the humbie or in the general vicinity of the humbie. We operate on a slightly different principle just for your listeners, for them
to understand how the technology works. We deployed about twenty to thirty censors per square mile, and the censers are spread out and they're designed to activate in time, stamp on impulsion noises, large sounding pops, boons, and bangs, and when three or more centers are able to detect and timestamp were able to use the time stamp differential to be able to do a mathematical calculation to triangulate or pinpoint the exact location of the gunfire and then go
through a couple of steps to confirm in fact that pop bloomber bang was gunfire for pushing the alert out to the subscribing agency, and this typically takes place within thirty to forty five seconds of the trigger being pulled. And this is why it represents such a game changer.
I think, as the commissioner stated, the difference between response, the precise response to a location of a gunfire event with a two to three minute advantage over the twenty percent of the time you do get a nine one one call can effectively make the difference between life and death.
And I'll just say that I know this personally because one of my dear friend's life was saved as a result of a shot spot alert where he was actually shot and the calls came in literally two minutes after and by the time the calls came in, they were already had first responders there to scoop them up and take them to the hospital. Whereas life was saved.
That is pretty incredible. CEO of shot Spotter Ralph Clark is with us, along with a former Boston Police commissioner, New York Police Commissioner chief in LA and he's been all over the place. Here's a Boston guy, Bill Bratton is with us, and we'll continue our conversation about the shot spotter system and why they think the people who are against it are well wrong. Ben Parker filling in for Dan Ray on night Side.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Life Side Studios.
I'm WBZ News Radio. All right, we're back and we're talking about shot spot her. And before we get back to our guests, I want to bring Andy and Merrimac back because he got to cut off and I just want to make sure he gets his question in fairly. Hey Andy, go ahead.
Hey, Sorry about that.
Yeah.
No, I was mainly colleges to bring up the boomerang system, and it seems like there was a familiar sort of system of systems, but definitely awesome and you know, a force multiplier for the police. It just, you know, for me, the second part of what I was calling about with the HD, I think it's the twenty two forty new legislation that basically ramps up firearm control, so to say,
kind of marketed towards coast guns. So i'm you know, if they're if they're gonna pair the law enforcement officers up with this new system, it seems like we're taking away you know, legal fire arms from laura biding citizens, will also making more of a detriment for our law enforcement personnel to respond to any sort of shot calls. I don't know if you can make any opinions on it, all.
Right, appreciate it, Thank you, Andy. I don't know if if that well, I mean, obviously, this is an argument that's always made about guns, and you know the laura biding one with a gun can take out a criminal with a gun. But I mean you obviously, and this is to either one of you. But you know, having less gun play and gun fire on the streets is obviously, I think every law enforcement person's goal, right.
So definitely that's in one of the goals of Shots Bought. It is to actively identify just how much gunfire is occurring in American cities, and there's a phenomenal amount of it. Based on the fact that eighty to ninety percent of shots. As Ralph indicated, I never called into ninety one one.
So the system is intended to whenever possible that shots of PI it, to try to get the police there quickly enough so that they can help a victim that I need attention or a rest to perpetrator who's using that firearm inappropriately, whether they legally possess it illegally possess it.
I want to think I was going to say that, I just want to throw this out real quick for you, Ralph, and the whole racial background, and as Bill mentioned, I mean, you're African Americans, so that kind of diffuses that situation. But so if you look into a place like Jamaica, Plain or Roxbury or Dorchester or wherever, and sure there's neighborhoods and areas there where there is predominantly African American populations.
But by saying that having this system in one neighborhood over another is inherently racist seems weird because you would be implying that no white people or other races live there, and no white people or other races ever fire a gun in those neighborhoods.
Yeah, it just doesn't come into our consideration, we want to be deployed where criminal gunfire takes place. And I think the critics of the system that try to make it a racial issue are looking at it more from a i'll call it criminal justice reform lens as opposed to a victimization lens. And we spent a lot of time talking about the victims of gun violence, ie gunshot victims.
But I think if you understood the trauma involved, especially with young people that are exposed to the violence of hearing gun bunts, they go to bed to the sound of gun violence, they wake up to the sound of gun violence. If we ever total the cost of the trauma inflicted on these communities to hear and experience that amount of gun bounds and then still not have police and first responders be able to come to investigate and treat it as a priority in care, that's further victimization.
That's twice victimization, and to me, that is that's racist. To me, I mean, we need to care about thectims. And I think when you look at it through that lench, it comes to a very different conclusion than the credits. So I think you're driving just to a different agenda.
Yeah, we're down to our last minute, but that CEO of shot Spotted, Ralph Clark, and former NYPD and BPD police commissioner Bill Bratton is with us. And before I just want to get this out there and then I'll let you guys respond to it real quickly. There was this letter sent by, among others, Senator Market and Senator
Warren about the complaining or criticizing this technology. And before you think, well, this guy's the CEO of a shot spotterer, of course you're going to say this, Well, there's a letter here in response to the letter that was written by the lawmakers that, among other things, says, we believe you've been misinformed and this formed the basis of your May fourteenth letter, a letter that draws misleading and frankly
dangerous conclusions that compromised public safety. That letter, that part of that bigger letter, was not signed by Ralph Clark. It was signed by a police commissioners and chiefs all across this fine state, including Michael Cox out of Boston, the Cambridge, Somerville, Revere. I'm not going to read them all because they'll waste too much time. So this gentleman and commissioner Brighton. This shows that this is being used by lots of police departments to do lots of good, and.
It does do lots of good in one hundred and seventy cities around America and Ralph.
I'll let you get the kind of the last word in here. Obviously, you're not going to give up trying to use your technology to save the lives that you say it does save.
No.
Absolutely, it's a calling for myself and my other three hundred plus colleagues. This is a mission orient work. We care deeply about this work and the significance of it in terms of saving lives and helping hold police in first responders to be more accountable, to prioritize responding to
ongoing persistent gun violence. And I think I would just add to I know there was a letter from the chiefs of police and commissioners, but I think it's also important to note that your mayor, who some would argue is a progressive mayor, is very supportive of the technology as well. And I can say that coming from a place like Oakland, California, which I was born and raised and currently live, that also is known to have progressive chops.
It's used in Oakland as well, and so I think progressive mayors in political leadership that really understand the value of life and understand how important it is to support police and do a better job in responding to these communities and the issues around gun violence. I think is incredibly important and we count them as very valuable allies.
All us work.
Thank you, I appreciate it. We'll let you guys go. That was a CEO of a shot spotter, Ralph Clark, and the former of BPD and NYPD and Chief out in La Bill Bratton, joining the show to talk about it. We will have much more coming up. Perhaps you've been watching the Olympics, maybe you haven't. We'll talk about the Olympics straight ahead on nights side of d BC m HM