Councilors OK budget for gunshot detection

The City Council unanimously approved a $1.5 million budget request from the mayor yesterday to put on city streets an acoustic gunshot detection system that police say would help them pinpoint the location of gunshots.

Police Superintendent Robert Dunford said in an interview that the department will immediately launch an open bidding process and hopes to have the technology running by this summer.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is facing intensifying pressure to answer a surge in firearm violence, including the slayings of two 14-year-olds and one 13-year-old since Dec. 22.

But as the council approved the budget request, some councilors expressed reservations about the project and accused the mayor of forcing the council to go along with his agenda without debate.

"I don't think it's fair . . . that we have to be pushed into voting on something without having a real hearing," said Councilor Chuck Turner, who represents Roxbury.

Councilor Charles Yancey of Mattapan and North Dorchester questioned whether the technology's capabilities have been oversold by a Police Department seeking answers to the city's crime problems.

He also said that many areas could benefit from the technology and questioned why police have focused on saturating only a 5.6-square-mile swath of the city with the detectors.

"This is not a silver bullet," Yancey said. "It's going to cover a specific geography, and we have had shootings in every district of the city of Boston."

Councilor Sam Yoon of Chinatown, said that he supports the project but that the mayor rushed the council to make a decision.

"There's a need for a comprehensive plan [to fight crime] instead of a piecemeal approach," Yoon said in an interview. "Every decision we make about a dollar we spend is a dollar we don't spend on something else."

John Tobin of West Roxbury was also critical of the administration's treatment of the council.

"It's a sharing of information that has to get better from the other side of the fifth floor," Tobin said, in an apparent reference to Menino's office.

Councilor Robert Consalvo of Hyde Park, who first introduced the idea of buying acoustic gunshot sensors, dismissed the criticisms as "petty politics."

"This was an 11-month process where we had two public hearings, two live demonstrations, and it's been all over the news," Consalvo said. "There is a responsibility on the part of my colleagues to get involved."

Community leaders who have been pressuring the administration to do more to combat gun violence applauded the council's decision to quickly approve the budget request.

Davida Andelman, chairwoman of the Greater Bowdoin-Geneva Neighborhood Association, said she believes the technology will help reduce crime.

"For the police to be able to hone in on where gun violence is taking place in a matter of seconds and minutes makes a big difference," said Andelman, who lives across the street from where 14-year-old Jason Fernandes was shot to death just hours into the New Year.

"I hear, three or four times a week, shots fired, and I don't even bother calling 911 because I can't tell where the shots are being fired," Andelman said.

In addition to passing the mayor's budget request to fund the gunshot detection technology, the council approved a $2.1 million request to fund the Boston Housing Authority police force.

Budget cuts by the federal government would have forced the BHA to disband its police force on July 1, Consalvo said, but the emergency funding will allow those officers to continue working through at least July 1, 2008.

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com; April Simpson can be reached at asimpson@globe.com.