Sarasota schools add high-tech security systems

The Sarasota County School District is spending nearly $2.5 million to beef up security on its campuses, installing metal detectors and a sophisticated video software system that can detect and track weapons on school campuses.

At its July 16 meeting, the school board approved spending up to $1.5 million to install OpenGate metal detectors at all high schools and middle schools this coming school year. Superintendent Terry Connor said a pilot program at Riverview High School this spring went well. 

“We started in April,” Connor said. “We were able to work out … kinks within a two-week period and were able to move almost 3,000 students through our weapons detection systems each and every morning for the remainder of that school year.”

Connor said he hopes to finish installations by the end of the coming school year, “but we will monitor that based on supply and demand.”

The OpenGate metal detectors are highly portable and can be set up in a matter of minutes, and will be used at school sporting events as well as building entrances. 

“It's a very unintrusive, easy flow system,” said Sean O’Keefe, director of safety, security tech and emergency management for the school district. “These are the same systems at sporting events, concerts, you know, most amusement parks.” 

The School Board also approved spending $917,000 for purchase and installation of an Omnilert Gun Detect system, which, according to the manufacturer, can detect a weapon being brandished and automatically alerts authorities who can launch an emergency response within seconds.

O’Keefe said the Omnilert system was also tested at Riverview High this past school year and performed well. 

“It went very well,” he said. “We did testing on our own, along with letting it run through the school year physically on the campus. It functioned in the exact way we wanted it to function, and we're very pleased.”

After the initial investment of $917,000, Connor said the cost of using the Omnilert system “will be about half of that on an annual basis.”

“It is a huge increase to our layered approach in safety and security,” O’Keefe said. 

Craig Maniglia, director of communications for the district, said the main concern is for students. 

“You can't put a price on safety,” Maniglia said, adding the School Board was supportive of the new systems. “Our School Board itself is very safety conscious, because it'd be very difficult to learn in an unsafe environment.”

A system that learns

Omnilert is sophisticated, AI-driven software that connects to a school’s existing security camera system.

The software constantly monitors a school’s camera feeds. It can recognize when someone is holding a handgun or long gun, such as an AR-15. 

Courtesy image

If a gun is detected, a notice, including an image from the video, can be sent to designated administrators’ via a cellphone app, text or desktop alert. 

Once an administrator confirms the threat, an automated response can be launched, notifying police and ordering a lockdown with the touch of a button.

O’Keefe said while no two school campuses are the same, he said the number of surveillance cameras at any given school can reach “into the hundreds.” 

“Luckily, we have the benefit of having a lot of infrastructure already in place to be able to utilize this,” O’Keefe said.

Having the software to constantly monitor every camera in real time will dramatically increase safety. 

“We're going to take a single camera that sits there and looks at one specific thing all day and make it a more proactive camera,” O’Keefe said.

And, with any AI system, the software “learns” over time. In a video posted by Omnilert on YouTube, the company claims the system will improve with every application. 

“It learns from all of the true positives and false positives and gets better and better as it goes. The longer it’s in the environment, the better it’s going to get at detecting guns in that environment,” according to the video.

The company addresses privacy concerns by saying Omnilert does not monitor customers’ video feeds or use facial recognition software. 

“Facial recognition usage in the state of Florida is prohibited; we're not allowed to do that anyway,” O’Keefe noted. 

“The only information that goes to Omnilert is when it does detect a weapon, or what it feels or believes to be a weapon,” he said. “So there's not a daily log of anything that's going to Omnilert unless it feels like it detects a weapon.”

Maniglia said the response from parents of Riverview High students during the testing was overwhelmingly positive. 

“It wasn't like we had a lot of resistance. People like to know that their families are safe and that their children are safe, and so it's a comforting fact to know that this step is happening and it's going to be put out into all the schools at some point. ... These systems, when you put them in place like at a stadium or anything else, they're a major deterrent to even want to bring something on campus."

This article has been updated to add Sean O'Keefe's full job title.