A Nashville School District invested around $ 1 million in AI Gun Identification Software, said the school district, so some people wondered what went wrong when detecting a school shooter in the corridors.
More than a week ago, 17-year-old Solomon Henderson carried out a shooting at the Antioch High School in the suburbs of Nashville, in which a classmate was killed and injured another. Henderson died after he had turned the gun himself, the police said.
The arms detection system at the school did not succeed in detecting Hennendon’s weapon during the shooting on January 22 because it was too far away from the surveillance cameras used to identify a weapon and activate an alarm, according to district officials. In the meantime, the CEO of the system says that the gun could not be detected because it was not visible.
The Word detection technology, called Omnilert, was deployed in February 2024 at all schools in the district to strengthen security, a spokesperson for the public schools of Metro Nashville told CNN.
With the help of AI technology, the system can identify a gun threat before shots are fired, so that local law enforcement can react faster and are reportedly preventing a tragedy, according to the website of the company. But it is just one tool that can be used in combination with other measures.
Omnilert’s software is relatively new and does not always work perfectly, according to the CEO of the company, Dave Fraser, who previously expressed its condolences to the school and the community. And although there is no harm to implement the technology if a school board can save the money, arms safety and surveillance experts say that there is no concrete evidence that fancy detection software is effective in preventing shootings at school.
This is how technology works, what experts say that went wrong and whether prevention is possible.
How does the technology work?
As the constant threat of massive shootings continues, school districts in the United States have invested countless dollars in safety measures to keep potential shooters out of the class-a crime prevention technique that is known as target hardenes.
Software for Wap Detections, such as Omnitech, is the newest goal -hearting source to get on the market, said Chaad Marlow, a senior policy advisor at the American Civil Liberties Union that focuses on privacy and school monitoring technology – issues.
“There is no intervention that is guaranteed to prevent a shooting at school. If so, we would use it all, “Marlow told CNN. “But there are some who may have a positive advantage.”
In most schools, surveillance cameras are used to keep an eye on any threats, according to Fraser. Although useful, these cameras are only useful after a tragedy has occurred and images are used to find out how the incident unfolded, he added.
For comparison: the AI technology used in the Pistool of Omnilert Detect Software is trained to view security video for weapons in real time, Fraser told CNN in a e -mail statement. These cameras are monitored by AI technology 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said. CNN asked the company how many school districts use the product, but have not heard anything yet.
“If a gun becomes visible, it is detected in less than a second and the detection information – a photo and a short video of the person with the potential gun, the location of the camera and the building – is sent to a person to A verification to be made that this is a real threat, “Fraser CNN said per e -mail.
In most cases, the technology initiates an emergency reaction in fewer than 20 seconds after a weapon has been detected, Fraser said. In the ideal case, authorities come to the school before shots are fired, he added.
“It offers at least usable information for staff and law enforcement to help them respond to the situation, including knowing the exact location of the attacker,” Fraser added.
What went wrong with Antioch
To make the AI technology work, the cameras must be able to see the gun – it cannot be hidden.
Metro Nashville Public Schools approved his two -year contract with Omnilert in March 2023, according to Sean Braisted, a spokesperson for the school district. Later that month, six people were killed in a shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, about 10 miles of Antioch.
In the case of the Covenant School and other similar shootings, “where the armed intruder came from outside the building or walked through the corridors with the weapon swollen,” Braisted said that the technology of Omnilert “would have been activated and improved police or administrative reaction . “
But during the antiochic shooting it seems to be not swollen on the Henderson’s gun – or at least not long enough to activate a warning from Omnilert. “Based on the position and location of the shooter compared to our cameras, the system was not activated by his weapon,” Braisted CNN said in an e -mail.
Although the gun was not visible to surveillance cameras, Fraser emphasized, the system did not identify the weapon in this case.
“This is not a matter of malfunction, despite the attempts to discredit the functioning of the system or to generate controversy,” he said CNN in an e -mail statement. To detect a gun, the camera must be able to ‘see’ the gun, he said, adding the gun was not visible.
Is prevention possible?
AI Gun detecting technologies such as Omnilert have “zero chance to actually prevent a shooting at school,” said Marlow of the ACLU.
“It fails from a technological point of view, that it is very inaccurate in identifying weapons, and it fails in a practical sense, in the sense that even if it worked perfectly, it is almost zero chance to get someone to intervene before A tragedy occurs, and that is the great fraud that plays here, “Marlow told CNN.
The CEO of Omnilert called the fraud claims “counterproductive for the mission that is obvious, which is the protection of our most precious resource: the lives of our children,” he wrote.
The most important problem with technology, Marlow argues, is the inability to work if a gun is not visible to the system’s surveillance cameras. In many cases, shooters hide weapons with a backpack or a jacket, he added.
“The only time that weapon will actually be visible to a camera is when the person is planning to use it to actually get it out where it is hidden,” said Marlow. “In most cases that will be done very briefly before it is used.”
False positives also often occur, Marlow said, because it is known that these types of systems incorrectly identify broomsticks as guns and rulers for knives.
The CEO of Omnilert maintains the effectiveness of the system and says: “Like every system, it is not perfect and has never claimed to be that. It is also not a solution to the challenge of rifle violence. “
If a technology is able to detect a gun before it is brought to a school, then it can be an intuitive choice for school districts, according to Marc Zimmerman, co -pirector of the Institute for Firearm injury at Michigan University. “I mean, why not? Why not use if they are not too expensive and they can be applied, “he said.
There is not one solution
In contrast to school -driving prevention measures that are supported by data – such as counseling in mental health care – there are no data that prove the effectiveness of arms detection software in preventing shootings at school, because the technology is too new, according to Marlow and Zimmerman. Given the lack of evidence, Zimmerman says that school districts should concentrate on all available prevention measures and not just one source that focuses on keeping a shooter outside a school.
“I would claim that if you are at that moment where you occur that a gun comes to school, you are already lost. You have already lost that child, “Zimmerman added.
Fraser agrees that multiple protection methods are needed to correctly protect each school. “We always recommend using as part of a layered system that can include people, metal detectors and other technologies,” Fraser CNN said in a statement. How those schools are protected is a decision that is often taken by individual school boards and in some cases, parents.
In recent years, some school districts have invested in installing emergency windows that make an easy exit possible during a shooting. In Georgia, a panic button system helped High School on Apalachee High School less than a week before the shooting on 4 September, he helped to inform the incident law enforcement officers almost immediately.
In the Nashville area, school district director Adrienne Battle said that the district will improve security measures in response to the shooting in Antioch.
“Because we have seen an increased feeling about safety and security at our schools, both with external (s) internal threats, we continue to investigate and study the most evolving technologies that will help us improve the safety and security measures within us , “Battle said in the aftermath of the shooting.
There are various safety measures at Nashville schools in the district, including the shattered film or security vestibules at the entrance of a school to prevent school.
This week the school district started to install scanners at the school, similar to metal detectors that use AI technology and advanced sensors to detect weapons while students enter, Braisted told CNN in an e -mail Friday.
But the developer of the “advanced” system, EVOLV Technologies, has been accused of overpromating some of his safety characteristics. It decided a lawsuit from 2024 with the Federal Trade Commission that accused the company of using ‘false claims’, including the system, can detect all weapons and is more accurate and more efficient than regular metal detectors, the FTC said in a press release last year.
Ultimately, parents also have to give priority to the correct storage of their weapons, Zimmerman added so that their children cannot use them to harm their colleagues or others.
“We have to think wider about this,” said Zimmerman. “There are several things we have to do.”
CNN’s Rebekah Riess and Dalia Faheid contributed to this report.
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