Miami-Dade schools opt for AI technology to keep students safe

MIAMI – Miami-Dade schools are opting for new gun-detection AI technology over metal detectors, embracing proactive safety measures. 
“Everybody wants their child; once they leave their house, they want their child to return back safely,” said Sherina Akins, a mother of a Miami-Dade Public Schools student.
It’s a familiar sentiment for parents across South Florida – and the nation.  One that’s prompted school districts to upgrade safety plans continuously and parents to consider if their children are in the best place to keep them safe.
“I just transferred my daughter from another school to this school partly because of safety and security,” said another parent who goes by Leon.
The effort to make schools safer brought walk-through metal detectors to Broward County Public Schools this school year, but parents in Miami-Dade shouldn’t expect to see the same.
Instead, the district tested a new technology over the summer.
“Artificial intelligence detection of firearms,” shared MDCPS board member Luisa Santos.
Santos told us nine schools, including the one we visited in Pinecrest, used specialized software with existing security cameras to detect if anyone was carrying a weapon outside the school.
“The blind tests that were conducted by our police department, it turned out that the technology is very effective,” shared Santos.
We went straight to the source to see how it works. The company behind this AI gun detection is called ZeroEyes. Founded in 2018, following the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland
“America seemed to reel from that one more than most of the prior ones,” shared Sam Alaimo, the co-founder of ZeroEyes. “I did some self-reflection, and around that time, our CEO, who I was in the Seal teams with, was picking up his daughter from school, and she had just gotten done during an active shooter drill.”
Alaimo helped launch the company staffed by retired military veterans or law enforcement personnel from their command center in Pennsylvania.
He shows us how the technology works.
“The moment a gun is exposed, a still frame image comes up,” explained Alaimo. “Human verifies it is, in fact, a gun, hits dispatch, the client gets it through multiple means. In the real world, we do this in about 3 to 5 seconds.”
Alaimo tells us they have 24 clients in Florida. Dade Schools might be the next, as Santos believes implementing this technology is a better path forward than installing metal detectors.
“Acquiring the metal detectors is between 3.5 and $5.5 million,” said Santos. “And staff those metal detectors because you can’t just have metal detectors without staff. That would cost us about $17 million a year. There’s a very high cost for something that’s not proven effective.  We also are concerned about logistics.”
She tells us the annual cost for ZeroEyes would be $500,000.
“If we see a threat or something that needs to be addressed, we make sure we assign it to an officer to make sure they follow up,” shared Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Ivan E. Silva.  
Even with new technology being tested, and around 18-thousand cameras currently in use district-wide, the importance of tips remains. 
Miami-Dade Schools says they have seen more than 100 tips a day on average since school started last month.
And this school year, for the first time, they have a full-time dedicated team conducting random sweeps at all schools with K-9 units and wands to detect firearms on school grounds.
“We want to basically be able to cover more schools and have more, more, be able to have more quantity of schools covered versus what we had before,” added Silva.
Chief Silva tells us he plans to recommend the district invest in and use AI firearm detection technology. Exactly when will we see a vote to approve and budget for it? Board member Santos says she could not give us an exact time frame, but they’re in the early stages of mapping a path forward.  In the meantime, the chief told me he believes his officers building rapport with students is ultimately the best way to keep students safe.
“Ones that bring us information of things that are happening in the schools,” said Silva. “They’re the ones that notify us and report any illegal contraband, such as firearms or narcotics. And that’s how we solve most of our cases because of our relationship with those students.”