By GREGORY ZELLER //
A new-and-improved gunshot-detection technology is returning to Suffolk County, part of a nationwide surge that owes itself in part to Long Island innovation.
Smithtown-based MIDI Product Development didn’t directly influence the county’s decision to give the ShotSpotter Respond tech – previously deployed by Suffolk from 2011 to 2019 – another shot.
But the veteran engineering consultancy, known best as a master medical-device innovator, did lend a hand (and significant brains) to the latest generation of ShotSpotter Inc.’s flagship technology, a public listening device designed to triangulate gunshots to within three or four feet and automatically alert law enforcement via digital apps – faster than any alert through the nation’s 50-year-old, human-based 911 emergency-call system.
“We made various improvements in its application from multiple perspectives,” noted MIDI Principal and COO Gregory Montalbano. “We worked with their acoustical engineers to improve its outdoor use and give it the high-end acoustical accuracy that was necessary.”
Suffolk previously deployed ShotSpotter in Huntington Station and other regional gun-violence hotspots, but ultimately pulled the plug; some critics cited hit-or-miss effectiveness and considerable costs, others suggested the technology targeted minority communities and was inherently racist.
Many of those same Suffolk communities – including North Amityville, Wyandanch, Brentwood, Bay Shore, Central Islip, North Bellport, Coram, Mastic and Shirley – are about to be mic’d up again. A $250,000 New York State grant will help Suffolk redeploy the technology, starting again in Huntington Station.
Gregory Montalbano: Proactive healthcare.
The redeployment rides a wave of coast-to-coast contracts for California-based ShotSpotter, amid an ongoing gun-violence epidemic that punctuates national headlines almost every day. (And is actually worse than you think, according to ShotSpotter, which estimates nearly 80 percent of gunfire-related incidents are not even reported to police.)
ShotSpotter Respond still has its critics, in Upstate New York, in other big cities and elsewhere (time and expense lead the rebukes). But it’s also received key endorsements – and even been validated in court.
And the self-billed “global leader in gunshot detection” has worked hard to step up its technological game – tasks that largely involved MIDI and its expert engineers.
Upgrading the detection tech was both an exciting challenge and a natural extension of the Smithtown company’s busy evolving national-security vertical, according to Montalbano.
“We’re primarily a medical- and scientific-development [consultant], but that overlaps with a lot of Homeland Security applications,” the COO told Innovate Long Island. “We develop a lot of products for in-theater use, border control and [Transportation Security Administration] applications.
“We’ve helped develop bomb-detection systems and chemical- and biological-detection systems, even transcranial doppler scanners used to scan for traumatic brain injuries,” he added. “We were able to connect with ShotSpotter through our associations with past clients.”
MIDI considered ShotSpotter Respond from the outside in, tinkering with “everything from material engineering and mechanical engineering to industrial design and ergonomic applications,” according to Montalbano.
With a bullet: Through Tuesday, there have been 24,275 U.S. gun deaths so far this year, according to the national Gun Violence Archive.
Outside casings were upgraded from sheet metal to plastic; new “volumetric configurations” were engineered to boost acoustics; intuitive installation and maintenance procedures were mapped and executed.
“We wholistically helped generate this next-generation product,” Montalbano said.
While MIDI didn’t officially play a part in ShotSpotter’s highly politicized return to Suffolk County, it was knee-deep in the redesign that revitalized the technology and encouraged its growing national prominence.
“Our primary business remains medical and scientific (applications),” Montalbano said. “But there are many overlaps into Homeland Security, where MIDI can lend its services and expertise to keeping America safe and developing products that enable our military and police to do the best job they can keeping us safe.
“That’s always very rewarding.”
