Gunshot Detection System in Schools: Recipe for Disasters
Peter Schultz
OK. Let’s think about this
development for a little while, viz., that Brockton High School in Boston got a
gunshot detection system as a gift from one of its alums who sells these
systems on the east coast.
The system has an alarm and detects
where the shots were fired, that is, which room in the school, and within
seconds alerts school officials and each and every police person in Brockton.
The police are to respond as if there was “an active shooter” on the loose, not
someone who is suicidal or someone who has taken hostages. The detectors are
battery operated. Sounds like it is as good as it gets, especially because as
the salesman said, “It takes human beings out of the situation.” So what could
go wrong?
First, it is really useful to have
all the police in Brockton notified, and being expected to respond? Sounds like
a possible SNAFU situation to me: Situation Normal All Fucked Up. I don’t’ know
how many police there are in Brockton but the possibilities for screw ups
increase as the number of officers involved increase. Where would all these
officers meet? Who would take charge of them and direct them effectively? How
would the SWAT officers interact with the other officers?
Second, the detectors pinpoint
where the shooter is, allegedly. Actually, they only pinpoint where the shot or
shots were fired, not where the shooter is because shooters are capable of
moving, shooting and then moving. That is, this technology creates a picture,
as it were, but there is no guarantee that that picture is accurate because
like all technologically generated pictures, these are only virtual pictures.
Mistaking virtual pictures for real pictures could lead to some pretty terrible
outcomes, like mistaking innocent students for the shooter or shooters.
That the picture is merely virtual
and not real is confirmed by the fact that the police are to assume that the
shooter is “active;” that is, is not suicidal and not holding hostages. But
what if the shooter is suicidal or holding hostages? If that’s the case then
the police will be responding to a situation that doesn’t in fact exist; they
would be responding to something like a mirage, something not real. If the
shooter had hostages and the police didn’t know that, the danger to the
hostages would increase. And if the shooter were suicidal, not homicidal,
treating her or him as homicidal could guarantee that the shooter’s “suicide”
would be successful, that is, suicide by cop. In other words, these situations
are far more complicated than can be conveyed by such technological tools as gunshot
detection systems.
And this is what happens when
humans are replaced by technology. Technological tools don’t have what humans
have, namely, imagination. Without imagination, these tools are essentially
blind to the situations they are allegedly assessing. Without imagination, it
is extremely difficult to assess situations realistically, although because we
are so enamored of technology these days we have forgotten that imagination is
absolutely essential for being realistic, for being in touch with what I like
to call “real reality.”
The very last thing that should be
done in dealing with situations like these is to remove human beings from
dealing with them, or subordinating the judgment of human beings to machines.
In every situation where either of these things is done, from drone warfare to
facial recognition systems, the results are eventually but always inhuman.
After all, why would you expect anything else when you take the human element
out of the real world? With humans taken out of our situation, only the inhuman
remains. Why is this so difficult to understand?
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