Sarasota County Schools is rolling out the state’s largest artificial intelligence-driven gun detection system this school year.
Virginia-based Omnilert Gun Detect system has been added to 4,800 existing security cameras installed throughout the Sarasota school district, which is the company’s second-largest deployment in the nation behind Baltimore County Public Schools.
While Omnilert has been in the public safety business for nearly two decades, CEO Dave Fraser said due to rising gun violence in schools nationwide, many existing customers — half of which are schools — needed more comprehensive monitoring systems.
“Most schools have some form of security camera surveillance system, but there’s an unfortunate reality that they’re not monitored,” Fraser said. “They’re used forensically after the fact, so our feeling was that we could take that resource and transform it into something that was capable of preventing gun violence by using artificial intelligence to do the monitoring.”
Omnilert Gun Detect uses advanced AI to identify firearms throughout school campuses, both indoors and outdoors. According to Fraser, when a weapon is detected, alerts are sent to designated personnel for verification, prompting action from security teams and law enforcement.
The system aims to enhance safety by monitoring school campuses for weapons. It offers 24/7 surveillance and rapid response capabilities, including features like automatic door locking, notifications to law enforcement and alarm activation when a firearm is detected.
“People want to innovate [and] school superintendents and administrators feel a tremendous pressure on them to do something about gun violence, but it is new technology, and it’s not like they can look around at many other of the other school districts [models],” Fraser said. “In the future, I’m sure it’ll be well enough understood that different organizations may deploy across the board right from day one, but at this point in time, it’s a sort of a phased approach that happens.”
Sarasota County Schools previously piloted the system at Riverview High School, receiving positive feedback from parents and staff, leading to its districtwide rollout. Fraser said the initial deployment was also used to assess how well the system worked among administrators and first responders.
Superintendent Terry Connor emphasized the district’s commitment to maintaining a safe learning environment, highlighting the importance of investing in technology to protect students and staff.
“Our district is fortunate to have a safety-conscious school board and community who understands this need and invests in solutions that will make for safer schools,” Connor said.
Sean O’Keefe, the district’s director of security, noted that the Omnilert system aligns well with existing safety infrastructure, allowing for effective integration and timely communication during potential threats.
“Accurate gun detections and fast verifications are only the beginning of a response,” O’Keefe said in a statement. “It is critical for us to share the intelligence from Omnilert with our safety systems immediately to ensure we maximize as many seconds or minutes as possible for our police and security teams to respond to a potential situation and to protect lives.”
According to a release, the system is designed with privacy in mind, avoiding the use of biometric data and keeping live video feeds within school premises. It also showcases the technology’s adaptability and effectiveness in real-world scenarios.
“In a lot of the active shooter situations, the guns have been clearly visible to security cameras, sometimes for minutes,” Fraser said.
He said a primary challenge is formulating a market for visual gun detection systems.
“Right from the beginning, we have been trying to show schools and other businesses that this can be highly effective,” Fraser said. “It’s one job is to look at feeds from video cameras 24/7 to detect the presence of a gun. It never gets tired, and it allows monitoring to happen in a way that is economically feasible for a school as well as other types of businesses.”
Sarasota County Schools is in the process of deploying the system across the entire district’s camera network. According to a release, the district has over 45,000 students across 56 schools and employs more than 5,200 teachers and staff.
