TBR Community Dinner & ShotSpotter Presentation
2026-03-04 18:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Cambridge Community Center, 5 Callender Street, Cambridge, MA, United States
The Black Response will host a community education workshop on ShotSpotter. This is the third event in a series. We encourage all Pirate Party supporters to attend this presentation. The community dinner is a potluck, so please bring some food to share.
The event will feature presentations by Gabriel Rojas, University of Chicago doctoral candidate, and Valerie Werder, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University. Gabriel Rojas has conducted extensive research on ShotSpotter in Chicago. His presentation will examine the history of SoundThinking (formerly ShotSpotter), the logic and strategies for ShotSpotter’s implementation, and the legal and affective harms associated with the ShotSpotter system.
Valerie Werder’s research critically examines police body camera footage. She explores the financialization of police body cameras, their implementation and governing protocols, and notably, the contractual terms surrounding data and access of police body cameras and footage. Her presentation will also reflect on the City of Boston’s 2013 contract with the corporation (then known as) ShotSpotter as well as a speculative analysis of how the ShotSpotter data might be used if the devices, the data, and financialization follows the trajectory of police body cameras. Please join us for a thought provoking set of presentations.

The Cambridge Community Center is at 5 Callendar Street, Cambridge. It is a five minute walk from Central Square and the MBTA Red Line stop there. Please register in advance.

Past ShotSpotter presentations:
