NYPD's subway gun scanners fail to meet expectations
NEW YORK (PIX11) -- The results are in. The scanners the NYPD tried using to catch guns at subway turnstiles did not get the job done.
Critics of the technology say what is even more troubling is the fact that over 100 people were stopped by police due to so-called false positives.
The pilot program was implemented at 20 stations around the city this summer. Mayor Adams called the results promising but after weeks of delaying the release of the results, the numbers were less than stellar.
There were over 2,700 scans conducted. There were 118 false positives, which equates to a rate of 4.3% or one out of every 23 people. False positive reports led to people being detained and searched by police, only to reveal there were no weapons.
12 knives were flagged, but the main goal of these was to catch firearms— and zero firearms were detected.
There were critics of this pilot program from the beginning, who said it violated civil rights— and set up potentially dangerous interactions between police and communities of color.
The company Evolv was not charging the city for this pilot program the mayor has long talked about since getting elected, but the Daily News is reporting that the city's Department of Investigation is looking into this contract the city has with the scanner.
Evolv has also been the subject of a class action lawsuit and has been accused of making false and misleading claims. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an inquiry into the company.
The mayor has generally defended pilot programs like this one as worth trying to keep people on the subway safe and if it doesn’t work, he’ll move on to something else.
But the Legal Aid Society says this should now be the end of the experiment.
"We have to try things that we know will work and there was so much data so much experience so much information about how these electromagnetic scanners don’t work that they shouldn’t have ever been driving in the first place," said Diane Akerman of the Legal Aid Society.
A City Hall Spokesperson released the following statement about the pilot program:
“Public safety and justice are the prerequisites to prosperity, and as our administration continues to look for ways to keep weapons off our subways, the NYPD’s pilot with Evolv helped serve as a deterrent to criminals and keep New Yorkers safe. At this time, the NYPD is still evaluating the results of the pilot and has not entered into any contract or commitments with the vendor.”