BALTIMORE — "Weapons-free zones:" that was the stated mission of Evolv technology, as we showed in our report last year, when Baltimore City Public Schools announced it would test out Evolv's weapon detection system in some of its high schools.
That language has since been scrubbed from the company's website,in favor of a humbler goal - to create "safer zones." The watering down of its marketing came after several investigative reports were published by a surveillance industry research group called IPVM.
Conor Healy and his team saw those big claims, as red flags.
"It wasn't just that they were being a bit hyperbolic about their product, but that they knew there were things it couldn't do, and their marketing contradicted that," Healy said.
That was what he found after getting access to the results of a field test Evolv did in 2021 at a soccer stadium in Ohio. The company celebrated the results when it released a 25 page report.But another 52 page report, marked confidential,is only accessible to those who would be using the technology.
Healy got it through an open records request, and found information that wasn't included in the public version.
For example -- during the test, knives were missed 42% of the time. IPVM kept digging, and talked with a superintendent at Utica City Schools in New York. He says last year, a couple of months after installing Evolv's system, a student with a knife made it through security and stabbed a classmate.
"After that stabbing, after the school district had paid 4 million dollars for Evolv systems, they replaced them with metal detectors which are about 10x cheaper," Healy said.
Something similar happened in Columbus, Ohio, but that school system decided to keep the Evolv system in place, after taking "immediate action to adjust the scanning system’s functions," according to the superintendent.
Evolv says, no technology is 100% foolproof.
"Since that test [in 2021], the system has gotten better. We've improved the algorithm, we've improved the detection capabilities. And we continue to do that over time," said Evolv co-founder, Anil Chitkara.
On Evolv's website is a page dedicated specifically to addressing accusations, mostly made by IPVM. The company denies claims that it removed negative information out of its public report, and says the reason why it even has a private report to begin with, was to protect the public.
"In the security industry, in the TSA, they don't share all of the information about exactly how security and technology systems work. And they do that because they don't want to provide that information to bad actors."
Healy says, "the public has a right to understand the pros and cons of an expenditure of millions of dollars of taxpayer money."
Evolv also addresses the accusation it has mislead the public on that webpage, saying "We wholeheartedly believe in our technology and our mission and deeply regret if any of our past statements confused or appeared to generalize our capabilities at the time."
Several law firms have announced investigations into Evolv, looking into possible securities violations, and whether the company's marketing practices injured investors.
"I believe that Evolv was very transparent with us. We talked through possible limitations. And we also experienced them," Lynette Washington, the Chief Operating Officer at Baltimore City Public Schools, said.
Six Baltimore City High Schools tested the product this past spring. One flaw the schools found - the system had a lot of false alarms. Chromebooks, for example, kept getting flagged as threats.
Evolv claims its system can distinguish between everyday metal items like keys, and weapons. But over the course of the pilot period, when the alarm went off, a real weapon was found less than one percent of the time.
"We realized that there's levels of sensitivity that we had to give attention to. So even still now, the weapons detection system is not 100% accurate. So we have training and protocols that we do - so students are to take their Chromebooks out of the book bag before they walk through the system," Washington said.
Evolv says schools should not rely on the technology alone, rather, the system should be used as part of a "layered approach" to security, one that includes trained staff members to provide additional monitoring and searching. That's exactly how Baltimore City schools intend to use it.
"For a lot of the previous reports of things of why the weapons detection system hasn't been successful in different places, I think the most important piece is around the training, and staffing it appropriately," Washington said.
The next step in getting the technology into Baltimore public schools is school board approval. There would then be a competitive procurement process, followed by extensive staff training. The soonest we could see schools using the system would likely be some time before the end of the school year.
It’s worth noting plenty of schools have had positive experiences with the system,as Evolv points to on its website.In Dorchester County, Maryland, which uses a Motorola system that’s powered by Evolv technology, the superintendent tells WMAR-2 News:
Dorchester County is very satisfied with the Motorola Solutions system, in fact, we are in the process of adding more to our School District if our budget can allow it. The system is mobile, which we have used at our outdoor High School Football games creating more security for our mass community events. As MD school systems across the state have had unfortunate security incidents this fall, we are glad we have this system in place. While implementing the system, we can enter over 500+ students in our largest high school expeditiously, which is quite impressive and something we are proud of each day."
The organization that conducted the 2021 Ohio field test, the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, says: "It is important to understand that the device(s) observed in the NCS4 report were positioned and configured for a professional sporting event. Therefore, the exercise criteria, observations, and outcomes will not directly correlate to educational facilities."
But the organization goes on to say, the results should not be considered “validation of capabilities.” In Evolv’s initial press release back in March 2022, announcing the results, the company said, the results provided “third-party validation” of its abilities. It later changed that wording to say "third-party support."
