Delays push setup of gunshot locator into fall, city says

The sophisticated gunshot-detection system that Boston bought to stem shootings will not be operational until October, months later than expected and too late to stave off the usual summer rise in gunfire and homicides.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino touted the crime- fighting capabilities of the acoustic sensors that can pinpoint the location of gunfire within 30 feet of its origin and dispatch police to shooting scenes in less than 10 seconds.

He pushed through an emergency $1.5 million funding order in January, expecting that the system, manufactured by ShotSpotter Inc., would be running this summer in the high-crime neighborhoods of Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury.

"We need more tools in our arsenal to track shootings and have police on the scene within seconds," the mayor said at the time. "Delays always give criminals a chance to leave the scene."

But city officials and ShotSpotter executives have spent weeks dickering over a contract and are now squabbling over staffing for the project.

City and ShotSpotter officials agreed yesterday that contentious contract negotiations and a lack of manpower are causing the delay. But each side blames the other for the drawn-out process.

ShotSpotter officials said that city lawyers were nitpicky during the contract talks and that Boston police have not assigned enough officers to the project.

City officials said the company tried to insert unreasonable provisions into the contract and has not hired enough crews to get the system installed quickly.

Whatever the case, Menino responded angrily yesterday when he learned of the delay.

"If it's not installed by Aug. 1, I'm going to another vendor," he said, adding that ShotSpotter is not the only company with gunshot- detection technology.

The contract with ShotSpotter allows the city to cancel the purchase if the company does not begin installation of the sensors by Aug. 1, but it also specifies that the system is not expected to be fully installed and tested until at least mid-September.

The average time for installation is between three and four months, company officials said, with the fastest turnaround being 2 1/2 months.

The longest installation time was in Washington, D.C., where the system covered 13 square miles and took almost 18 months to install.

If the contract with Boston had been signed sooner, the system could have been installed by now, said Gregg Rowland, the company's senior vice president for sales and marketing.

The city first began looking at the technology more than a year ago, when Councilor Rob Consalvo asked the mayor and police officials to look at ShotSpotter, which was credited with a 31 percent reduction in violent crime in North Charleston, S.C., and with helping police in Gary, Ind., to catch shooting suspects with guns still in their hands.

After a demonstration in January, Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis lobbied the mayor to buy it. Four days later, the mayor pushed a supplemental budget item through the City Council, saying the city could not wait until July 1, the beginning of the next fiscal budget year, to buy the system.

The city's competitive bidding process began in early March and ShotSpotter, based in Santa Clara, Calif., was awarded the contract in April, company representatives said. The contract was not signed until June 7.

"Boston has more lawyers than police officers," Rowland said.

City officials said the company made unreasonable demands in a series of proposed contracts. City lawyers declined to divulge details of the disagreements.

"This is a big project and a lot of public money," Davis said yesterday. "We have to be cognizant of the taxpayers."

Police and company representatives met in Boston Thursday to hammer out details of installation not included in the contract.

The company has already identified 80 percent of the roughly 130 sites in a 6-square-mile area where the sensors could be installed, Rowland said.

The next step is for Boston police to get permission from owners of the buildings and other locations to allow installation of the sensors.

Once those permissions are obtained, he said, the company can begin installation.

Rowland said the Police Department has not assigned enough officers to complete that step before Aug. 1, and the ones the department did assign have vacations scheduled in the coming weeks.

"The only thing you can do to speed it up is throw a lot more officers out there getting permissions," he said.

Police officials acknowledged the four or five officers assigned to the project are scheduled to take vacations in the coming months. But they said ShotSpotter should assign additional crews to put up the sensors more quickly after permission is granted.

"Vacation has nothing to do with it," Superintendent Robert Dunford said. "The vendor only has so many people assigned."

Consalvo said yesterday that he is disappointed in the delays and plans to look into speeding up the process. "Whatever it is, whatever we need to do to make it a reality, we need to roll up our sleeves and make it happen," he said.

Suzanne Smalley of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.