A large school safety company says Leon County's Godby High School is the first in the country to install an AI based system to instantly detect and report a gun on campus. Zero Eyes School Safety President Chris Heilig says the technology uses the school's existing network of cameras. These pass the suspected gun image to a human-staffed response center. Personnel there make the final determination about the legitimacy of the threat. If confirmed, they then sound the alarm to the designated responders.
"So the camera feed at the school detects the gun with our software, we receive an image with a bounding box around that weapon, and then we communicate to the school district, 911, law enforcement to say, 'There's a weapon on campus.'"
The entire process, says Heilig, is very close to instantaneous.
"Within 3 to 5 seconds, if it's a dispatched weapon on campus, it's go time and we're all working to head that off at the pass."
The same Zero Eyes technology, said a company spokesman, was used to alert police in early May to the presence of a gun in a parking garage at Florida State University. The school brought it online after last year's fatal on-campus shooting.
Meanwhile, back at Godby High, another company is providing drones to give a literal birds-eye view of any emergency. So far this year, Leon School District Safety and Security Chief Jimmy Williams says a total of three firearms have been taken from students who brought the weapons to school.
