A.I. gun detection false alarm at school has Baltimore County leaders calling for review
Baltimore County councilmembers are calling on school officials and police to review an A.I. gun detection system after an alert mistakenly detected that a student had a weapon.
Omnilert AI Gun Detection System warned school leaders at Kenwood High School that a student had a gun.
It turned out that there was no weapon. Instead, it was a chip bag mistaken for a gun.
Baltimore County councilmen call for action
Baltimore County councilmen Julian Jones and Izzy Patoka want county school superintendent Dr. Myriam Rogers and police to review the Omnilert AI Gun Detection System after the false alarm.
"Thank God it was not worse," Jones said. "How did it come to be that we had police officers with guns drawn approaching a kid because of a bag of Doritos?"
School administration received an alert that an individual on school grounds may have had a weapon, according to a letter sent to the school community from Kenwood's principal, Kate Smith.
Alert canceled, no gun found
The Department of School Safety and Security reviewed and canceled the initial alert after confirming there was no weapon.
"I contacted our school resource officer (SRO) and reported the matter to him, and he contacted the local precinct for additional support," Smith said in the letter. "Police officers responded to the school, searched the individual, and quickly confirmed that they were not in possession of any weapons."
Kenwood's principal also wrote that counselors will provide direct support to the students who were involved in Monday's incident and they will be available to speak with any student who may need support.
"Please know that ensuring the safety of our students and school community is one of our highest priorities," Smith said. "We work closely with Baltimore County police to ensure that we can promptly respond to any potential safety concerns, and it is essential that we all work together to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for all Kenwood High School students and staff."
The image closely resembled a gun, Omnilert said
WJZ reached out to Omnilert, and a spokesperson for the company explained that the image that was sent to their personnel closely resembled a gun.
"It was verified and forwarded within seconds to Baltimore County Public Schools' safety team for their assessment," the spokesperson wrote. "Within moments, the event was marked as resolved in our system. Omnilert's involvement concluded at that point, and the system operated as designed — detecting a possible threat, routing it for human review, and ensuring rapid, informed decision-making."
Superintendent: "Humans have to verify"
Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Myriam Rogers said the school system installed Omnilert in 2023, and it was operating properly.
"The program did what it was supposed to do, which was to signal an alert and for humans to take a look to find out if there was cause for concern at that moment," Rogers said.
Rogers added, "In terms of false positives, what the system is supposed to do is, if there are certain characteristics, send an alert for staff for humans to actually look at and identify."
Rogers reemphasized that the Omnilert is a multi-step process in which a human has to verify whether or not there's a credible threat before police can respond.
"Because the third step is, if someone verifies it's a credible threat, then all of the Emergency Response Force personnel have that information, and then they report to the location," Rogers said. "This system is AI, and it's looking for certain elements, and then humans have to verify them."
Previous Omnilert incidents
Councilman Jones wants to make sure the Omnilert system is operating properly in nearby schools, but also across the county, after he learned it was the same gun detection system that did not detect a hidden gun in January 2025 before a deadly school shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee.
"What can we do to make sure it does not happen again for a number of reasons?" Jones asked.
Omnilert told WJZ it remains confident in the effectiveness of its system and is committed to working closely with our customers and the broader community to maintain the highest levels of safety, transparency, and trust in every deployment.
"Each situation is unique," a spokesperson for Omnilert wrote in a statement to WJZ. "In the Nashville case, the gun was not visible to the camera and therefore not detectable by any vision-based system."
An Omnilert spokesperson continued, "Our technology can only identify what the camera sees, and we emphasize that AI gun detection is one layer of a comprehensive security strategy that always includes human oversight and other safeguards."
Omnilert told WJZ it appreciates the concerns expressed by Baltimore County officials and invited leaders to review how their system works.
"The company understands the importance of maintaining confidence in safety technologies used in schools," an Omnilert spokesperson said. "We welcome any review or discussion that helps the public better understand how our system works, as we are confident in the reliability and value of our technology."
