The City of Chicago has quietly authorized a six-figure payment for an expansive “law enforcement search engine and information platform” from SoundThinking, maker of the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter, according to public records. The payment caps off a six-month pilot for the software, called CrimeTracer, that ran in 2024, though the program’s future is not immediately clear.
In August, the city paid SoundThinking $727,361 for CrimeTracer, according to a receipt released to the Reader by the Office of Public Safety Administration (OPSA). The receipt doesn’t mention CrimeTracer by name, but it was provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for payment records related to the software, and the OPSA confirmed the payment was for CrimeTracer.
Additional information—including whether the CPD has an active contract with SoundThinking for the product—is not immediately available. The OPSA did not provide an updated contract, and neither the CPD nor Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office responded to the Reader’s questions about the payment. There are no active contracts with SoundThinking for CrimeTracer listed in the city’s procurement database.
The secrecy surrounding the CPD’s use of surveillance technology underscores longstanding transparency and privacy concerns, and it’s emblematic of the complex web of procurement and budgetary gymnastics that allow Chicago police to funnel payments to private companies with little public accountability or oversight.
CrimeTracer is used by more than 2,500 law enforcement agencies and boasts access to the “largest network of agency data in America”—essentially Google for police. The software allows subscribers to search for a person’s license plate number, name, or even general description among more than 1.3 billion records contained in CrimeTracer’s “Information Network,” culled from license plate readers, 911 calls, booking photos, arrest warrants and reports, ShotSpotter alerts, gun ballistic reports, wedding certificates, vehicle registrations, and more. Analytics and visualization tools draw maps that link related people, events, properties, and vehicles.
SoundThinking representatives first met with the CPD about CrimeTracer in January 2023, records show, and police superintendent Larry Snelling signed an agreement for a free trial in October of that year. According to a proposal dated February 8, 2023, the six-month pilot was set to run for up to 300 users in the CPD’s Area Four. (The region covers most of the city’s west side, where communities are predominantly Black and Brown.) SoundThinking’s team would integrate the CPD’s data warehouses with CrimeTracer’s “Information Network”—allowing the CPD to access records from agencies in other jurisdictions and vice versa.
The October 2023 agreement notes that, at the end of the trial period, the CPD could either quit using CrimeTracer or continue “on an annual paid subscription basis.” SoundThinking agreed to waive all fees associated with the pilot, records show, so the $700,000 payment in August suggests that the CPD opted to keep using CrimeTracer. Additionally, a line item in the OPSA’s 2024 budget appears to have earmarked $500,000 for the technology under a category called “software maintenance and licensing.” Ahead of the pilot, SoundThinking CEO Ralph Clark predicted in a November 2023 earnings call that it would culminate in “a mid- or high- six figure transaction in the latter half of 2024.”
The Reader’s questions about the payment and whether the CPD has an active CrimeTracer subscription have gone unanswered, highlighting the opacity with which the state operates its ever more pervasive surveillance apparatus. An unsigned email from the CPD’s press office referred all questions to the mayor’s office and the OPSA. Erin Connelly, a spokesperson for Mayor Johnson, initially acknowledged the inquiry but didn’t respond to multiple follow-up messages sent over weeks. Jerome Flip, a SoundThinking spokesperson, declined to comment.
“The acquisition of controversial surveillance technology by CPD continues a familiar mode of operating,” says Freddy Martinez, who researches police surveillance with Lucy Parsons Labs. “Like in the case of ZeroEyes, agencies are given ‘pilot’ software, which are then quietly purchased with no public notice or input. The Johnson administration continues this pattern with no regard to their utility, need, or costs.”
The Department of Procurement Services handles the majority of the city’s contracting services. In 2020, then mayor Lori Lightfoot created the OPSA to manage procurement specifically for the city’s police, fire, and emergency management departments. It was created to reduce duplicate costs across the agencies and consolidate civilian staff working in departments like finance and human resources. In practice, the setup has done little but obscure the true scope of the CPD’s more than $2 billion budget. Funding for many of the surveillance technologies used by the CPD is buried in the OPSA operating budget.
Chicago has blossomed into a surveillance playground—from license plate readers to predictive algorithms, police jump at the opportunity to experiment with new technologies on the city’s predominately Black and Brown south and west sides. The use of these tools often comes with little if any public transparency, oversight, or accountability despite their multimillion-dollar price tags and their wholesale erosion of any semblance of privacy or due process.
CrimeTracer, formerly called Coplink, was developed in the late 1990s through a collaboration between the University of Arizona and the Tucson Police Department. A series of acquisitions saw the company sold to IBM in 2011 and Forensic Logic in 2017 before it was purchased by SoundThinking in 2022.
The series of acquisitions and pilots is “indicative about how much of this is just business and marketing, aside from mass data collection for the purposes of state and corporate violence,” says José Martinez, a senior organizer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Chicago police first tested CrimeTracer in 2007, when officials paid $500,000 to use the technology in the city’s fusion center, a joint federal, state, and local information-sharing hub. It’s not clear when the CPD discontinued use of the product.
Last February, Johnson announced that he was making good on a campaign-trail promise to cancel the city’s contract with SoundThinking for ShotSpotter—after a final extension through November. A grassroots campaign argued that the millions of dollars spent on the technology would be better spent on community services like housing and education. In defending his decision to cancel the contract, Johnson compared ShotSpotter to “walkie-talkies on a stick” and said the technology has failed to reduce gun violence in Chicago.
A vocal faction in the City Council slammed Johnson for the decision and attempted to strong-arm the city into keeping the contract without success. Then, in February, Johnson’s administration announced it was soliciting new proposals for “gun violence detection technology.” Final responses are due by April 11.
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