Detroit has a rich history of citizen research that contributes to the strength and vitality of our movements toward justice. In the early days of the urban agricultural movement, people explored innovative methods of soil testing and remediation. Often these efforts combined scientific practices with a systematic gathering of community knowledge. 

Over the decades of the struggle against incinerators, people learned how to analyze and track air quality. During the rush by corporate and state powers to declare the city bankrupt, citizen research offered a counter narrative to financial data and generated new ideas about how to deal with financial crises. As the city faced massive water shut offs, citizens research documented the impact of public actions to limit shut offs and linked shut off policies to increased risk of disease and other public health concerns.

Recently, we explored the careful documentation of tax abatements, captures, and credits indicating that Mike Duggan has taken $442.5 million from our property taxes for downtown development schemes. When tax year 2023 numbers are received and added to this report, it will be over half a billion dollars that has gone from libraries, schools, and special education. There has been no official compilation of this data by the city. It has a vested interest in obscuring it.

This week at City Council, we heard another effort at citizen generated data to expand how we understand what is happening with expensive police technologies. While the Detroit Police Department continues to demand more and more money for technologies and asserts that this technology is essential to creating public safety, citizen researchers raise serious questions.  

Based on data obtained through FOIA requests researchers found that Shotspotter in Detroit is hardly worth the millions we are spending. Only 15% of Shotspotter alerts generated evidence of gunshot activity. Of that 15%, only about 7% lead to identifying a “person of interest.” Of that, only 2% lead to an arrest. There is no indication that Shotspotter played a critical or central role in these arrests. However, it did play a role in intensifying police activity. In areas where there was alleged gun activity, police presence was intensified for up to 3 months., increasing the probability of negative interactions, especially with young people. This research indicates that DPD is allocating resources based on information which has only a marginal relationship to safety.

The use of automated license plate readers has an even more dismal record. In a 90-day period there were nearly 25 million scans. This led to 64 arrests, mostly for low level infractions. The rate of arrest per scans is - 0.0000025736%. This is a rate far below cities who are now considering abandoning the expensive technologies. 

Citizen generated research is critical because people ask very different questions than agencies attempting to build budgets and purchase shinny gadgets. Citizen based research tends to emphasize the connected context of decisions, to look toward the consequences of specific actions, and to generate other possible answers to pressing questions.

As technologies become more complex and as vested corporate interests see new ways to make money, research dedicated to assessing the public good is critical. 

The tendency of city officials to disrespect and disregard this research does damage to all of us. A stronger path to better decision leads to funding our independent researchers in the same way we fund independent artists.  Citizen led research enriches all of us. The track record of such initiatives is far more positive than any of the technologies touted by our Mayor and Chief of Police.