With schools coming back in session around the country, Baltimore County Public School District (BCPS) has become the latest district to deploy Omnilert Gun Detect, an AI-powered visual gun detection platform, to protect its students and staff from active shooters and gun violence. The BCPS Superintendent of Schools, Myriam Yarbrough, spoke to NBC News to explain the advantages of this new layer of security, saying,
"What this system does is it helps us to provide emergency response right away. In a lot of cases where there have been horrific incidents, every second and every minute counts, and you have people who are either frozen in the moment, or you have people who assume someone else has called 911.”
Omnilert Gun Detect solves this by being an always-on monitor looking for weapons through cameras already installed throughout the school district. The district plans to integrate the software with its 7,000 existing cameras, representing one of the largest deployments of visual gun detection technology in the country. This intelligent software has the power to turn these cameras into 24/7 monitors that can spot a brandished weapon in less than a second and then once verified, can instantly activate a robust emergency response plan that could include calling police, notifying students and staff, locking doors and much more.
Student and Staff Privacy? No Problem!
This deployment from BCPS follows on the heels of many other schools adopting Omnilert Gun Detect, such as the Nashville Public School District and Charles County Public Schools. With so many schools integrating the software for the upcoming school year, Omnilert always gets the question on whether student and staff privacy is being protected. The answer is a resounding yes!! In fact, Omnilert’s Mark Franken spoke to the Baltimore Banner about this very issue. As he pointed out, the Omnilert platform does not have any facial recognition capabilities and video feeds never leave the campus. “Gun Detect does not store live footage but rather scans the feeds," Franken said. “A recording only gets made and shared if a gun is detected.”
Watch the full report from NBC Baltimore
You can learn more about Omnilert gun technology and protection from active shooters with these resources: