Baltimore City Public Schools is considering giving school safety an upgrade, with a new weapons detection system to replace traditional metal detectors.

Six schools piloted Evolv earlier this year, with mixed user reactions. The system scanned over 73 thousand times, with alerts being sent out for over 17.5 thousand instances.

Only 1% of those alerts – or 10 total cases – actually resulted in a weapon being found, said communications director André Riley.

Tricia Lawrence is the principal of the city’s largest high school, Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, which enrolls nearly two thousand students.

“So any type of tool or method that can lead to efficiency, and a positive student experience is something that I'm willing to listen to, and really to try,” Lawrence said.

That’s why she led a pilot of the Evolv system in Mergenthaler, known as Mervo, from March until June of this year. Now, she says students are asking her to get the system back.

“The efficiency of it really helps to create a better mood,” she said. “You don't have a system that is as loud; you don't have a system that has more of a delay; you don't have a system that requires more checking.”

Right now, every Baltimore City high schooler starts their school day by walking through a traditional metal detector. But Riley said the current system has challenges.

“Our current metal detectors, they can lead to wait times,” he said. “Students, kind of like folks at the airport, they all arrive at the same time, and then you're gonna have these long lines.”

Evolv uses enhanced technology that scans for a specific density of metal found in weapons, and specific shapes. This upgrade is supposed to reduce wait times, and reduce false alarms.

Lawrence said both are true for Mervo, as seen through the spring trial. And 62% of 560 students surveyed by the city district said their wait times were much shorter with Evolv, Riley said.

But Camille Coffey, a student representative for the Baltimore Student Union, said some students don’t buy the benefits of Evolv.

“That density of metal is also extremely common in umbrellas, and eyeglass cases, and Chromebooks, which are the school-distributed devices that we have,” she said. “It's becoming sort of traumatizing for students to have to deal with constantly being accused of having weaponry on their person, when really it was a Chromebook or an eyeglass case.”

City schools leaders are still debating whether they will move forward with a contract to put Evolv in all high schools, replacing the traditional metal detectors.

“We have not committed to a purchase yet. We still remain interested as a school district in it,” Riley said. “We just want to find the system that works best for our schools, that keeps guns and weapons of mass destruction out of our buildings, while also ensuring that we can get students through the line in an efficient manner.”

‘We’re not looking for metal; we’re looking for weapons’ 

Lawrence said the district’s current metal detectors cause extreme delays at the front door – mainly because nearly every students’ bag needs to be individually searched.

“This system that we're using, it identifies anything metal,” she said. “So if you have a key, if you have a piercing, even your glasses…if we don't know specifically what it is, it goes off. And we're searching for a weapon.”

Lawrence said she had to make school drop-off times earlier to filter students through the traditional metal detectors before classes start.

Jill Lemond, Evolv’s senior director of education, said the system’s increased specificity aims to resolve those problems.

“A lot of times people walk through our systems and don't even know that they're walking through our systems, because so few people are getting stopped,” she said.

Evolv also zeroes in on the exact location of the detected metal item, allowing school staff to search in a specific spot in a students’ bag or on their person. This reduces unnecessary invasions of privacy, Lemond said.

“When you're walking through a metal detector, you get that sort of sterile feeling, emptying your pockets and being treated as though you're guilty until you can prove that you're innocent,” she said. “It's the opposite of that with Evolv systems. We're assuming positive intent. And it's because we're not looking for metal; we're looking for weapons.”

Lawrence said the Evolv system blends into the school environment, reducing feelings of being monitored.

“There's no policing, because you don't even know that the machine is there,” she said.

But Coffey said students still feel over-policed.

“Students feel like the people who preside over us, who are responsible for us, feel upset by our presence, or stressed out by us,” she said. “It’s like they don't really want us to be there.”

Trial results and next steps

Coffey said that students still don’t feel safe with the Evolv system.

“Beyond just the awful feeling of it all, the shame and humiliation and stress involved in that process, it's even worse that there are also plenty of weapons that the system does not test at all, like pocket knives and tasers,” she said.

Riley said 57% of surveyed students reported feeling safer with the Evolv system in place – and 91% of staff said the same.

But he acknowledges that there still are students like Coffey.

“There are students out there that feel like such systems infringe on their privacy or their rights, or that it makes their school feel more like a correctional facility,” Riley said. “Our job is to listen to their concerns, to make adjustments when we can. And most of all, just do the best we can to keep kids and students safe.”

Riley said district leaders will present city school board members with data from the trials at Mervo, Patterson, Excel Academy, Carver Vocational, Dunbar, and Frederick high schools sometime this month.

“Before we can adopt the system, we want to make certain that we have some of our basics on hand,” he said. “There's a cost to operating that system. Are we staffed appropriately to use it?”

Lemond said Evolv is built to be used in schools.

“It really is great at detecting weapons,” she said. “But it makes kids feel good as they're going through it. So it's the best of both worlds in my mind.”