DUBLIN, Ga. — This week, the city of Dublin debuted a new tool to better detect shootings.
The Flock Raven Safety is an audio system that shows where gunfire is coming from, and Dublin Police say it can pinpoint the exact location of a gunshot in about 45 seconds.
On June 27, Dublin Police arrested two people for shooting into a house right on North Church Street. Thanks to the new Raven system, the police said they knew about the shooting, and had an exact location before anybody called 911.
"It's to make us more efficient and to be able to pinpoint those locations," Police Chief Keith Moon said.
The system has sensors placed in 52 spots around town. Moon said it'll save them a lot of time responding to shooting calls.
"When we have shots fired calls, we're trying to find the location of it. Because the way the calls come in sometimes, they might spread over a half mile area of people calling in about gunshots," Moon said.
He said they have laptops in most of their police cars, and the laptops have the new system installed that can play back gunshot sounds, to see how many shots are fired. It also shows a map of the location.
They placed the sensors in areas where they saw the most shootings last year.
"We took data from 911 to look at our shots fired calls over a year period, and we took that data and created a heat map. And they were able to put those audio devices in strategic locations where we could cover most of that area," Moon said.
Mayor Joshua Kight said they saw the new system as an investment in officer and resident safety.
"One of the most important things that we can do as a city, is make sure that we're investing in technologies that will make our officers more efficient. So that we can have officers, that can do more than they could do in the past," Kight said.
Dublin's already installed other technology from the same company throughout the city, like their Flock Safety cameras that have license plate readers.
"As we continue to layer these technologies, we're gonna be able to respond to crime more quickly and more safely for the officers," Kight said.
He said hopes it sends a strong message, that Dublin won't tolerate shootings in neighborhoods.
"It won’t take long for criminals to learn that using guns in Dublin will put the police on their doorsteps in minutes," Kight said.
For the shooting on June 27, Dublin Police arrested two people, but dropped the charges against one on Wednesday.
They're still looking for a third suspect, Devante Deshawn Strickland.
If you have any information on the case, you can call Dublin Police at 478-277-5023.