THE REMAINS: Did the city council get it right?

TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2026

Warring subgroups remain: Friend, please tell us the truth:   

Did the city council of Cambridge, Mass. get it right last week?   

We ask you for a reason. Before we tell you what the city council did, let's bring ourselves up to date on the current nature of Cambridge, Mass.  

Inevitably, the city in question is best known as the home of Harvard and MIT. In fairness, though, it's also a regular American city, a bit like other such cities. 

The leading authority on the matter starts by telling us this:   

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the most populous city in the county, the fourth-largest in Massachusetts. 

[...]

Kendall Square, near MIT in the eastern part of Cambridge, has been called "the most innovative square mile on the planet" due to the high concentration of startup companies that have emerged there since 2010. In 2022, Cambridge was home to over 250 biotech companies, with more than 120 located within the Kendall Square ZIP Code.

So goes the current Cambridge. Because race and ethnicity came into play, or may have seemed to do so, in the policy matter we're about to discuss, we'll mention these latest estimates from the Census Bureau:

Cambridge, Massachusetts / QuickFacts
Non-Hispanic white: 53.8%
Asian: 20.4%
Black: 10.5%
Hispanic: 8.8%  

Roughly speaking, something like that. The Census Bureau doesn't make these matters especially easy. 

We now turn to the nine-member council in question:

Last Monday, the council voted to end the use of the gunshot detection technology known as ShotSpotter—to end its use in Cambridge. This decision became the subject of a "cable news" discussion last Thursday night—a "discussion" conducted by one of the many warring subgroups which have emerged from our flailing society's ongoing "democratization."

During last Thursday's imitation of human discourse, the subgroup in question used its time to tell cable viewers "Where the [BLEEPS] Are." 

Tomorrow, we'll let you see the actual words which were used in this pseudo-discussion.

It was quite a pseudo-discussion! Before we get to that part of the story, we'll let Boston.com offer an overview of what the BLEEPS in question decided:

Cambridge City Council votes to end use of ShotSpotter technology

The Cambridge City Council voted Monday to end the use of ShotSpotter devices throughout the city. The vote comes after years of debate over the benefits and potential risks associated with the technology, which listens for gunshots and quickly alerts the police if any are detected.

Five councilors voted to stop using ShotSpotter, while two opposed them and two others voted present during the council’s meeting this week.

With the vote, the council ordered the city manager and police officials to stop using ShotSpotter within 90 days. The contracts involving ShotSpotter will be terminated, and the devices themselves will be physically removed from locations around Cambridge.   

The report by Boston.com continues on from there. It was one of two news reports cited by the subgroup in question during Thursday night's presentation.   

Somewhat amusingly, the subgroup in question also cited a news report by the Harvard Crimson! In that report, undergraduates Boehmer and Michal mentioned some of the criticisms which had been directed ShotSpotter's way over the previous fourteen years:

Cambridge City Council Votes to End ShotSpotter Use Amid Privacy, Accuracy Concerns

The Cambridge City Council narrowly voted Monday to end the city’s use of ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system that has drawn years of criticism from residents and councilors over privacy concerns and potential data-sharing with federal authorities. 

The policy order, which passed in a 5-2-2 vote, directs City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 to remove and disable ShotSpotter devices across Cambridge within 90 days of signing the measure.

More than 30 residents urged the Council to cancel the city’s contract with SoundThinking, ShotSpotter’s parent company, during public comment Monday. They argued that the system is inaccurate, intrusive, and incompatible with Cambridge’s surveillance and sanctuary city ordinances.   

That's the way the Crimson's report began. Soon, these observations were added, in what might be described as a fair and balanced manner:

The Cambridge Police Department began using ShotSpotter in 2014, and in the decade since, only 35 percent of the notifications sent through the system were confirmed as actual gunfire. The system has often mistaken other loud noises—including backfiring cars and popping balloons—for gunshots.

Councilor Ayah A. Al-Zubi ’23, the lead sponsor of the policy order, said the city should evaluate surveillance technologies against “measurable standards”—including accuracy, cost, or resident input, before adopting them. “It’s got a higher false positive rate in our city and cities across the U.S., in which case I believe the benefit does not outweigh the risks of situations where our police department might be misled,” she said.

Acting Police Commissioner Pauline E. Wells urged councilors to keep the system in place, arguing that ShotSpotter gives police a tool to respond to gunfire when residents do not call 911.

“There have been at least 11 times when ShotSpotter detected gunfire in our city, and not a single 911 call came in—not one. That means 11 moments when no one reached for the phone, 11 moments when officers would have no direction, 11 moments when seconds were slipping away, and ShotSpotter was the only reason help was there at all,” Wells said.  

For starters, let us say this—Cambridge, Mass. is no city for unschooled women. The numbers after two of those names indicate the years in which the city officials graduated from Harvard itself. 

The lead sponsor of the policy order has only been out three years! We add these observations:  

If we're reading the representations correctly, ShotSpotter's spotting of shots may be incorrect as much as 65 percent of the time. On such occasions, the city's various Car 54s are sent off in the direction of gunshots which aren't there.  

Perhaps more strangely, the text of the Crimson's report suggests that there have been only eleven incidents in twelve years in which ShotSpotter spotted actual spots which weren't also reported to 911. Bason on his quoted statement, Councilor Al-Zubi ’23 may have concluded that this rate of return doesn't justify the substantial cost of continuing the system.   

On the other hand, Acting Police Commissioner Wells apparently feels that the system is a useful tool for police. Here as elsewhere, you could even imagine that reasonable people could reach different conclusions about the topic in question.  

For the record, ShotSpotter is in wide use around the country. For whatever it may be worth, a larger city—Chicago, Illinois—ended its use of the system last year:   

For an NPR report on Chicago's decision, you can just click here. (Headline: Chicago will drop controversial ShotSpotter gunfire detection system.)  

For a formal report by Chicago's Inspector General, you can just click this. (Headline:  OIG Finds That ShotSpotter Alerts Rarely Lead to Evidence of a Gun-Related Crime and That Presence of the Technology Changes Police Behavior.)

Friend, how about it? Did City Manager Huang ’05 and Councilor Al-Zubi ’23, joined by other council members, make the right decision for their city last week? 

For ourselves, we have no idea!  That said, no such uncertainty intruded on the pseudo-discussion which took place last Thursday night on a major "cable news" program. 

The program to which we refer is peopled by one of the furious subgroups created by our society's headlong democratization—by the "democratization of media" which has turned our flailing nation's public discourse into a modern Babel.  

With apologies, if we had to give a title to last Thursday's imitation of human life, we'd have to offer a title like this:  

Where the BLEEPers Are!

Tomorrow, we'll show you what was actually said when this inbred subgroup began to declaim about the Cambridge city council, but also about the "more than thirty" residents who had spoken before the council about the use of ShotSpotter. 

Brief video clips of four of those residents flashed by on the screen. The other residents who stated their views were gone, forgotten, discarded.

Back to the subgroup in question: 

Many such subgroups now exist, comprised of members who believe every word of their group's tribal lore. Or at least, so it may seem when such people are paid to appear on cable.

For better or worse, the so-called "democratization of media" has been underway for at least four decades now. Several components of this democratization may have seemed like good ideas at the time. 

They seemed like good ideas at the time! Last Thursday's pseudo-discussion is part of what now remains.

Tomorrow: What the cable news subgroup said. 

Also, the Atlantic's Helen Lewis discusses "masculinism."

Thursday: The state of Florida's new history curriculum

Friday: What the late Barney Frank said