CHARLES COUNTY, Md. — There are close to 1,700 surveillance cameras in Charles County Public Schools. But who's actually watching them?
"We're not a casino, we don't have big rooms that are full of cameras where somebody's reviewing and watching them all the time, that's just not a possible task," explained Jason Stoddard, Director of School Safety and Security for Charles County schools.
After the shooting in Uvalde, Texas last year, he and his team spent six months researching ways to improve security.
That's how they came across a company called Omnilert.
CEO Dave Fraser explains the new technology that's designed to spot a gun in less than a second.
"It's simply an artificial intelligence that watches existing video cameras. So it monitors the feeds from cameras, and unlike human beings, it never takes a break. It works 24/7," Fraser said.
This is where the humans come in: the system sends an alert to the school and to first responders immediately, including a photo of the potential shooter and their exact location.
The school and police can then determine whether the threat is real, and launch a response.
"So if you look at footage from Parkland, through Tops market, to Uvalde, all of those are situations where the gunman was clearly visible in security cameras beforehand," Fraser said.
Fraser says, the key here is the fact that the gun can be detected before it even enters the school.
"Most examples of active shooter situations happen outside the building - in fact about 70% of them do," Fraser explained.
AI now has a full-time job in Charles County schools. The technology is installed and ready to go for the new school year.
Since it's added on to existing security systems, Stoddard says it's the most cost-effective way to improve student safety.
"This is pretty low-hanging fruit. It's a win-win for everybody. There are no ethical issues with it - it's not recording, it doesn't use facial recognition," Stoddard said.
Omnilert first started rolling this technology out about a year ago, and it's already in hundreds of schools. The CEO expects that number to turn into thousands, very quickly.
