In the first installment of “Tracked,” an AP series that examines the effects of algorithm-driven decisions on people’s everyday lives, AP examines a law enforcement tool that has been used as evidence in court.
For months, investigative reporters Garance Burke, Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman had been digging into a controversial tech tool favored by police, an algorithm-powered gunshot detection system they learned was being used as evidence in criminal trials that helped send innocent people to prison.
Michael Williams sits for a portrait in his South Side Chicago home, July 27, 2021. Williams sat behind bars for nearly a year before a judge dismissed the murder case against him.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
The trio contacted dozens of defense attorneys nationwide, pored over thousands of documents, including confidential material from the California-based company ShotSpotter, and built relationships with sensitive sources, including Michael Williams, a 65-year-old grandfather who had just spent nearly a year in a Chicago jail. Williams’ attorneys contacted Burke exclusively to let her know that he was about to be released after prosecutors dropped their murder charge against him. The reason? The ShotSpotter evidence prosecutors used to build their case was “insufficient.”
ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark stands for a photo at his office in Newark, Calif., Aug, 10, 2021. ShotSpotter uses microphones and algorithms to try to detect when and where gunshots ring out in cities where it’s deployed. Clark says the company is constantly improving its system, but it still logs a small percentage of false positives.
AP Photo / Josh Edelson
ShotSpotter equipment is mounted over the intersection of South Stony Island Avenue and East 63rd Street in Chicago, Aug. 10, 2021.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Members of the Chicago Police Department work with ShotSpotter technology in a strategic decision support center at the department’s 11th District – Harrison headquarters, Feb. 8, 2017.
Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune via AP
Letters written by Michael Williams to his wife, Jacqueline Anderson, and a card she sent him sealed with a lipstick kiss are just a few samples of the couple’s correspondence shown at their South Side Chicago home, Aug. 2, 2021. Williams sat behind bars at Cook County Jail for nearly a year before a judge dismissed the murder case against him in July at the request of prosecutors, who said they had insufficient evidence.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Jacqueline Anderson watches as her husband, Michael Williams, takes their dogs out in the backyard of their home on the South Side of Chicago, July 27, 2021. Anderson said that for days after the May 2020 fatal shooting of 25-year-old Safarian Herring in Williams’ car, Williams curled up on his bed, having flashbacks and praying for his passenger.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Jacqueline Anderson holds hands with husband Michael Williams at their home on Chicago’s South Side, July 27, 2021. On his first night after release from the Cook County Jail, Williams couldn’t eat on his own. He’d beaten COVID-19 twice while in jail, but developed an uncontrollable tremor in his hand that kept him from holding a spoon. So his wife Jacqueline Anderson fed him. And as they sat together on the couch, she held onto his arm to try and stop the shaking.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Family photos sit on a mantle in the South Side Chicago home of Michael Williams and his wife, Jacqueline Anderson, July 27, 2021.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
A woman walks past one of the many closed businesses along East 79th Street in Chicago, Aug. 13, 2021, on the city’s South Side near the site of the fatal 2020 shooting of Safarian Herring.
AP Photo / Mark Black
Shooting victim Safarian Herring of Chicago is shown in an undated family photo. Samona Nicholson, Herring’s mother, said he once studied at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school and dreamed of starting a food-truck business. Two weeks before being fatally shot in May 2020, he had survived a shooting at a bus stop. Nicholson believes police had the right suspect in Michael Williams; she blames ShotSpotter for botching the case.
Courtesy of Samona Nicholson via AP
Drivers stop at a gas station on Chicago’s South Side, Aug. 17, 2021, where Michael Williams tried to get cigarettes late on a Sunday evening in May 2020, the night 25-year-old Safarian Herring was shot in Williams’ car.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Michael Williams' wife, Jacqueline Anderson, speaks during an interview in Chicago, July 27, 2021. When her husband was in jail, she pleaded with him to remember their fishing trips with the grandchildren, how he used to braid her hair, anything to jar him back to his world outside the concrete walls of Cook County Jail.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
At his South Side Chicago home, Aug. 2, 2021, Michael Williams reads a letter written by his wife Jacqueline Anderson with an uncharacteristic lipstick kiss, a sample of her correspondence to Williams while he was incarcerated at the Cook County Jail for nearly a year as a murder suspect.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
That break became the basis for the first investigation in a new series called “Tracked,” funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Burke and Linderman hurried to Chicago for the first of a series of interviews with Williams at his Chicago home, which put a human face to a story about inanimate algorithms that can change the course of people’s lives.
Legal affairs reporter Michael Tarm joined the effort, obtaining records through the Freedom of Information Act and sources, and securing an interview with the family of the man Williams was accused of killing. With footage shot by Chicago video journalist Teresa Crawford and photos by Charlie Arbogast, producer Serghino Roosblad edited a moving minidocumentary about Williams’ life and struggles following his release.
The resulting story was picked up by hundreds of outlets, including the major Chicago papers. Even amid news from Afghanistan and the Capitol bomb threat, this was among the most-read stories on AP News, netting more than 158,000 pageviews.
Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., asked the Justice Department to look into whether ShotSpotter and other technologies contribute to bias in policing. The Chicago Sun-Times published an op-ed demanding that ShotSpotter evidence not be used in court. The AP team was interviewed about their findings, including by CBS News and WVON News, an influential Chicago talk radio station focused on the African American community.
For dogged document research, delicate source work, nimble reporting and all-formats collaboration, the team of Burke, Mendoza, Linderman, Tarm, Crawford and Arbogast and Roosblad is first runner-up for AP’s Best of the Week award.
Visit AP.org to request a trial subscription to AP's video, photo and text services.
For breaking news, visit apnews.com
