>> Mayor Brandon Johnson pulled the plug on ShotSpotter nearly a year ago.

Critics warned the decision to turn off the controversial gunshot detection system would unleash a wave of gun violence on the city's south and west sides.

Well, the new analysis suggests those fears were unfounded.

City data shows violent crime and homicides dropped significantly in the 12 neighborhoods once home to ShotSpotter sensors.

Heather Sharon joins us now with more.

Heather, so break this down for us.

So areas that had ShotSpotter sensors saw a 17.8% This crease in violent crime.

>> In a 37.0, 5% decrease in the number of homicides.

Now there's no evidence in this analysis by Rob Carr gets of Chicago Justice project.

He says sociology professor, that the removal of ShotSpotter caused this decrease in crime, which is somewhat in line with the citywide drop in crime we've seen in the first 6 months of 2025, but it certainly suggests that the removal ShotSpotter did not cause a public safety threat and so many older people and south and West Side, residents warned to the mayor, the Chicago City Council be twice rebuked Johnson and demanded that he reversed his decision to scrap that system.

Is this analysis showed that the mayor made the right call.

Florida's told me that it certainly suggests that Johnson did the right thing by sticking to his guns under pressure.

However, the causes of crime increases decreases are hard to pinpoint with any specificity.

So like I said, the only thing we can do is say Shotspotter didn't read removal of shot spotter didn't make anything worse in neighborhoods that have really suffered this persistent violent crime for DEC.

It's so under pressure, Johnson agreed to consider proposals for a new gunshot detection system.

Does the mayor still think the city needs one?

Well, he pouch this question at a press conference earlier this week, sort of saying he was in favor anything that works to reduce crime and increase public safety.

However, the city taken no action to move forward on any of proposals that he got all the way back in April, suggesting certainly at least not a priority for the Johnson administration and with this data in hand, it's hard to see why Johnson would spend millions of dollars to set up a new gunshot detection system.

And he said that it has to cover the entire city, something that really doesn't exist.

And to be clear of those proposals did not sound thinking the owner of ShotSpotter also submit one certainly and I reached out to them for comments about this decrease in crime and they said they couldn't comment because of the ongoing contract process.

Of course, OK, so the analysis, it also looked at whether violence interruption programs are helping to reduce crime and homicides want to find.

Well, it looked at specifically one program that has state and local funding the peacekeeper program, which trains residents to sort diffuse disputes to prevent them from spiraling into violence and in areas of the city that had that active program, the decrease in crime was more than 20% significantly more perhaps than the citywide decrease.

Now, the big issue here, as we've talked about on the show, is that the funding for these programs are incredibly uncertain at this point.

And it's not clear whether they can be sustained given the cuts in federal funding and the city's own massive budget crisis.

Yes, another subject that Heather is spending lots of time payments lots of time with You're not your own.

Thanks so