Gun Violence Task Force to add ‘gun dog’ to Cape Girardeau police force

Alfred Lewers, senior director of Trauma Response and Community Engagement, gives an in-depth presentation about the ShotSpotter system and how it affects cities at the Gun Violence Task Force meeting Thursday, Aug. 1, at City Hall in Cape Girardeau.

Nathan Gladden ~ ngladden@semissourian.com

The Cape Girardeau Police Department revealed during the Gun Violence Task Force meeting Thursday, Aug. 1, at City Hall, it is acquiring a new K-9 that can find firearms.

The meeting also held a presentation by SoundThinking, the company behind the ShotSpotter system. The presentation went in-depth into how ShotSpotter works and serves Cape Girardeau.

K-9 officer Scott Droddy talked to the committee about the police department’s newly acquired K-9. Droddy said the department has just purchased a gun dog, a K-9 trained to find guns.

“This dog is going to be trained in person-worn guns and it can also detect on article searches and school lockers, it can run vehicles,” he said.

Droddy said the K-9 is a pointer dog and not meant for apprehension such as patrol dogs.

He said searching cars would be a small area of focus for the dog, since “everybody’s allowed right to have firearms.” Droddy noted an incident where the dog can be used to find guns in a car and that would be considered a shots-fired case if the vehicle is attached to it.

He said the dog would be used mostly at city events or other events where guns wouldn’t be allowed, such as “graduations”.

“This dog will walk into crowds, it’s constantly working, it will alert,” Droddy said. “What it does is it just marks them, marks them and it just follows right behind them. There’s no bite, there’s no repercussions, there’s no added issues.”

He said while the dog is still going through training, it “should be on the road” by the middle of August or October.

Droddy said the department’s current plan is to have just one “gun dog” while it is new to this, and the area is as well.

Moms Demand Action’s Leslie Washington asked what made the police department get a “gun dog”? Droddy said there were many factors, but the dog’s nose can locate guns after a shots-fired incident a lot faster than police can.

He said the dogs can also find shell casings and distinguish between casings and guns.

ShotSpotter presentation

​ShotSpotter is the current technology the Cape Girardeau Police Department uses to detect shots fired in certain parts of the city. Senior director of Trauma Response and Community Engagement Alfred Lewers said while every technology has false positives or negatives, their “contractual obligation is to provide 90% of the audible outdoor non-suppressed gunfire within 60 seconds or less” to their customers.

“We’re constantly monitoring our accuracy, and we depend on the police department to let us know when there may be either a missed incident, a dislocated incident or a misclassified incident,” Lewers said.

SoundThinking customer success director Kevin R. Johnson noted the Cape Girardeau Police Department is a “model for the entire country”.

“What they’ve done with their deployment, other cities are trying to emulate that,” Johnson said.

Lewers said the police department had recovered more than 300 shell casings in its first year of using ShotSpotter. He said tracking those shell casings to other crimes is a “key to success”.

“I share with people that as far as I’m concerned shell casings are the rape kits of the '90s,” Lewers said. “There are scenarios where there were kits that were sitting in evidence rooms and there were assailants. DNA was on file, and there were quite some times they were actually incarcerated after they committed a crime. But because those kits weren’t tested, that DNA wasn’t harvested and compared. They were on a mild charge and they got out and were able to re-offend. Same thing with shell casings. You could have a scenario where these shell casings would tie a gun to a crime.”

Lewers prefaced when he gave out the city’s ShotSpotter data to the room, that it’s not “apples to apples” because the city has expanded its coverage area across the years to detect more shots fired.

He said that from April 4 to Dec. 31, 2022, there were 156 alerts with 568 rounds being fired; in 2023, there were 418 alerts and 1,494 rounds fired; and from Jan. 1 to July 29, 2024, there were 200 alerts and 685 rounds fired.

Lewers said while some people might say ShotSpotter is expensive, his answer is “absolutely not”.

“A homicide costs society a minimum of about $827,000 to $1.5 million per homicide, and that’s from the Giffords Center (for violence prevention),” Lewers said. “That’s taking into consideration the initial response of police, the investigation, police, EMS, if that person makes it to the hospital, the prosecution, the defense, incarceration, loss (of) revenue from the person who has been murdered and lost revenue with the person who’s incarcerated, reduced tax revenue from depressed tax values because of crime. So gun violence and homicides are very expensive.”

The next meeting of the Gun Violence Task Force will take place Thursday, Aug. 15. The committee members include co-chairman and president of Kidd Oil Co. Adam Kidd, co-chairwoman and executive director of Safe House of Southeast Missouri Jessica Hill, Cape Girardeau Public Schools superintendent Howard Benyon, Cape Girardeau Public Schools assistant superintendent Josh Crowell, Cape Central High School counselor Nita DuBose, development director of Southeast Missouri Network Against Sexual Violence Alix Gasser, Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce president Rob Gilligan, Ritter Real Estate’s Jared Ritter, Cape Girardeau Central High School principal Nancy Scheller, Broadway Pharmacy owner Lee Schlitt, Laura Selbo, Community Partnership of Southeast Missouri executive director Melissa Stickel, Lighthouse United Church senior pastor Adrian Taylor, Cape Girardeau County Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy, former City Council member Shannon Truxel, Southeast Missouri State University president Carlos Vargas, Jefferson Elementary principal Amber Walker, Lynn Ware, Moms Demand Action’s Leslie Washington and Cape Girardeau Public Schools district registrar Tina Wright.