New York City is rolling out AI-powered scanners in a new effort to remove guns from its subway system, but a pilot program that began on Friday has already drawn skepticism from riders and threatened lawsuits from civil rights groups who say the searches are unconstitutional.
The Evolve Scanner, a sleek-looking weapons-detection device that uses artificial intelligence to search passengers for guns and knives, was on display in a Lower Manhattan subway station where Mayor Eric Adams announced a 30-day trial.
“This is good technology,” Adams said at the Fulton Center near the World Trade Center.
“Would I prefer not to have to be scanned? The answer is yes,” he added, “but if you talk to the average subway rider, they’ll tell you they don’t want to carry a gun on the subway, and if they have to use a scanner, then have one.”
Adams, a self-described “tech geek,” stressed that the scanners are still in the experimental stage. The machines, already in use at baseball stadiums and other venues, will be deployed at a handful of stations, where only a small percentage of passengers will be asked to pass through. The city has not signed a contract with Evolve, and Adams said other companies are welcome to propose their own gun-detection technology.
The roughly 6-foot-tall scanner features the NYPD logo and a multicolored light display, and if it detects a weapon, it sends an alert to a tablet monitored by two NYPD officers. The system isn’t designed to trigger an alert on everyday items like cellphones or laptops, but it was triggered by a reporter’s iPad case on Friday.
The scanners drew immediate criticism from civil liberties advocates, with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society vowing to sue the city if the technology is widely deployed, arguing that the screening violates passengers’ constitutional rights.
“The city acknowledges that these scanners are primarily intended to counter passengers’ ‘perceptions’ that riding the subway is unsafe. This is not a valid basis for a constitutional claim,” said NYCLU attorney Daniel Lambright.
The scanners have also raised concerns from passengers who say subjecting millions of commuters to security screening is neither practical nor reasonable.
“It’s not going to work,” Dre Thomas, 25, said, shaking his head at the devices. “They’d have to be installed in every single place on the subway. I don’t know how that’s even possible. It seems like another way to waste taxpayer money.”
Wyatt Hotis, 29, said he thought the scanners were a good idea but that they were “not the root of the problem” because the bigger safety concern is people being pushed onto the tracks. He instead suggested adding guardrails and fencing to platforms and more police patrols.
Margaret Bortner, one of the first passengers to go through the scanner, said the 30-second test wasn’t painful but she didn’t see the need for scanners at every station.
“Officers have more important things to do,” she said.
Crime on the New York City subway has declined in recent years, although there have been some high-profile incidents, such as a shooting on a Brooklyn train in 2022 that left 10 people injured. Overall, violent crime is rare on the subway, and train cars and stations are generally as safe as other public places.
So far this year, through July 21, subway crime is down 8% compared to the same period in 2023, according to police data. There were five homicides on the subway last year, down from 10 the year before that, police said.
Mayor Adams has long discussed the possibility of adding weapons detectors to the subway system, suggesting this week that “eventually we’ll be able to tell if there’s a gun at every ticket gate,” but that doing so might require the city to deploy thousands of police officers to respond to gun alerts.
Experts also questioned the feasibility of deploying the technology in the city’s vast subway system, which includes 472 stations with multiple entrances and exits. The Fulton Center, the subway hub where the mayor spoke, illustrates the challenge of installing detectors on a system that’s designed to be as accessible as possible.
With multiple entrances and dozens of ticket barriers spread across several blocks, the station serves up to 300,000 passengers a day, and many sprint to catch a train during rush hour. People who want to carry their guns without going through a firearms checkpoint can just walk to another entrance or to a nearby station.
According to the Daily News, Evolv CEO Peter George himself acknowledged that the subway is “not the best use case” for the scanners.
Evolve says its scanning system uses artificial intelligence to screen up to 3,600 people per hour and can quickly detect the “signatures” of guns, knives and explosives without alerting mobile phones or other metal devices.
The company has faced a flurry of lawsuits in recent years, as well as a federal investigation into its marketing practices. Evolve told investors last year that it had been contacted by the Federal Trade Commission, and in February said it had been contacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a “fact-finding investigation.”
Earlier this year, investors filed a class action lawsuit, accusing company executives of exaggerating the capabilities of their devices and claiming that “Evolve does not reliably detect knives or guns.” The company claims it has been the target of a misinformation campaign by people “motivated to discredit the company.”
New York City has experimented with a variety of security measures to ensure the protection of its vast subway system, and in 2005, the New York Police Department conducted a pilot project aimed at investigating the feasibility of using explosive detection technology on the subway.
Police then began randomly checking the bags of subway riders, an initiative that also received a lot of publicity, and such bag checks are now rare, though they have not been phased out entirely.
CEO Daily provides essential context for the news business leaders need to know. More than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily every weekday morning for insight on and from the C-level. Subscribe now.
