Baltimore county high schools have gun detection system that alerts police if it sees what it deems suspicious

An AI apparently mistook a high school student’s bag of Doritos for a firearm and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed.

Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him.

“At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’” Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station.

Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him – finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert.

  • Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.todayEnglish
    29·
    4 days ago

    This news article is missing the statement from the school’s principle:

    In a statement shared with parents, Principal Katie Smith said the school’s security department had reviewed and canceled a gun detection alert, while Smith (who didn’t immediately realize the alert had been canceled) reported the situation to the school resource officer, who called the local police. https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/25/high-schools-ai-security-system-confuses-doritos-bag-for-a-possible-firearm/

    Looks like this system just flags footage for review and humans make the ultimate decision.

    I’m not sure how the notification on this flag/event is worded. It’s possible that it should be worded differently to express a need to actually look at the footage.

    In this case the principle probably jumped into panic mode, or didn’t understand the system well enough.