Yes, we scan? The promise and limits of gun scanning technology – New York Daily News
Mayor Adams has been a big booster of next-generation metal detectors built to identify concealed firearms. News reports in these pages have raised worthwhile questions about how he gravitated toward one market leader, Evolv, which makes a device that’s had recent pilot runs in City Hall and Jacobi Medical Center. Very wealthy people with investments in the company gave huge sums to a pro-Adams political action committee. The administration must be open to all manufacturers, not give one an inside track.
An even more important question is whether the scanners reduce risk and save lives in different settings — specifically in entrances to subway stations, a use case Adams has floated multiple times in the wake of a scary spike in underground shootings. Contrary to the 63% of New Yorkers who told pollsters they’d support such a deployment, count us highly skeptical.
The good news about these newfangled devices is that people don’t have to stop to empty their pockets of keys and phones and the like; they just walk through, while an artificial intelligence-enabled scan looks for guns. The bad news is that they are useless unless security personnel are present to stop someone when they alarm, either to confirm the finding and then confiscate the weapon and presumably affect an arrest, or investigate further and find the machine got it wrong. Even if false positives are relatively rare, they happen. To that end, Team Adams should release results from the pilots to date to detail guns detected, false-positive rates and other indicators of success or failure.
To date, the scanners have been rolled out at carefully controlled entrances staffed with trained security personnel, including museum and sports venues. The subway is a different kettle of fish.
There are 472 stations; the number of entrances is a multiple of that. If scanners were conspicuous, gun carriers could just avoid the entrances where they’re installed. If not — or if the idea is to blanket the entire system with them — the cost will explode. So would the need for staffing.
Equally serious is the friction problem. At busy times, people must flow seamlessly through turnstiles and into stations, thousands per hour. Slowing and complicating this inflow strikes us as impractical to the point of impossibility.
Gloss