Chicago's Inspector General issued a report saying that the use of the ShotSpotter gunfire detection system by the city's police  'rarely produce[s] documented evidence of a gun-related crime, investigatory stop, or recovery of a firearm'. 

Having analysed 50,176 ShotSpotter notifications from January 2020 to May 2021, the Inspector General concluded 'CPD responses to ShotSpotter alerts rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime, rarely give rise to investigatory stops, and even less frequently lead to the recovery of gun crime-related evidence during an investigatory stop.'

The report also questioned the 'operational value' of the system and, based at least in part on aggregate ShotSpotter data, found that it increased the incidence of stop and frisk tactics by police officers in some neighbourhoods. 

The finding prompted was the Electronic Frontier Foundation to criticise ShotSpotter as 'a dangerous and humiliating intrusion on bodily autonomy and freedom of movement.'