The RTC is believed to be the first transit system in the United States to implement firearm-detecting technology of this nature utilizing artificial intelligence in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday, June 26, 2024.
Sunday, June 30, 2024 | 2 a.m.
A child brought a toy gun onto a Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada bus earlier this month.
Until recently, officials would likely not have realized the child was possessing the toy.
But it was spotted using a firearm-detecting artificial intelligence system the commission recently debuted.
The RTC is believed to be the first transit system in the United States to employ firearm-detecting technology of this nature utilizing artificial intelligence. The security enhancement increases safety for passengers, bus drivers and RTC employees, officials said. And, they stress, it’s vitally important technology.
“It’s critical,” said Tom Atteberry, director of safety and security at the RTC. “Anything we can do regarding public safety and combating an active shooter-type situation or a critical incident involving our employees or our riders, we look at enhancing our security posture on that as much as we can.”
The system, named ZeroEyes, was added to the RTC’s existing network of security cameras and uses artificial intelligence technology to detect firearms. ZeroEyes was founded and created in 2018 by a collaborative team of former Navy SEALs and technology experts and holds a United States Department of Homeland Security SAFETY Act designation.
Protecting people was one of the main reasons behind the development of this technology.
RTC requested the exact locations where its technology is being deployed be withheld for safety reasons.
It’s a process that only takes seconds, said JT Wilkins, ZeroEyes senior vice president of sales.
Once someone walks into a transit center brandishing a gun, the security cameras utilize “computer vision” to identify the weapon based on details such as the shape, then it sends an image to a group of humans based in one of ZeroEyes’ control centers in Pennsylvania and Hawaii.
The team of control center employees — who staff the center around the clock — do a final check of the image to determine if it is, indeed, a firearm and whether it poses a threat.
If a gun is identified, the image and location details are sent to Metro Police and RTC security for them to respond, Wilkins explained.
According to Nevada law, riders can only bring a gun onto one of its 39 routes if they have a concealed carry permit, otherwise the “carrying or possessing of illegal weapons is outlawed.”
Since installing the technology about a month ago, the system hasn’t detected any true threat. When it detected the child with the toy gun, police were not called and the situation wasn’t reported due to a lack of threat to the public, but Wilkins said it was an example of ZeroEyes’ detection power.
ZeroEyes was initially brought to RTC facilities about a year ago when Wilkins — with the help of United Safety and Survivability Corp. — began meeting with RTC CEO M.J. Maynard to discuss what it could mean in Southern Nevada.
The firearm technology was installed earlier this year and has been running for about a month now, Wilkins noted. The RTC and ZeroEyes signed a contract for one year that could be extended in the future.
“RTC has been an absolutely phenomenal agency to work with … RTC’s security network is state of the art; everything that we’ve interacted with so far has been great,” Wilkins said. “The team at RTC is extremely forward leaning, and we’re just very thankful to be able to help the Southern Nevada community, as well as the city of Las Vegas, increase ridership and make people safer getting on the bus every single day.”
Violence involving guns has occurred on several RTC buses over the years.
One of the most recent incidents involved a 16-year-old boy who was arrested in November 2023 for the alleged shooting of another teenager on an RTC bus.
The RTC reported 166 passenger-on-passenger assaults on buses during fiscal year 2023, which ended last June, according to data from the transit commission. It was a 29-incident decrease from the previous year, but up 16 events from 2021.
Thirty-five passenger-on-driver incidents were reported during fiscal year 2023 as well. Atteberry said as of June 20, 2024, the RTC has seen 87 passenger-on-passenger attacks and 23 passenger-driver assaults — nine of them were for spitting.
Atteberry, who oversees safety measures at the RTC, said violence on public transit here still pales in comparison to other metropolitan areas with similar populations.
Security directors in other cities have called Atteberry, he said, and commented that they’ve experienced in a month what Las Vegas has in a year.
With ZeroEyes, they’re hoping to reduce that even more.
“When you look at transporting 51 million people in public transportation, and you only have 23 passenger-on-driver assaults and nine of them are spitting, that’s extremely infinitesimal, especially compared to other cities,” Atteberry said.
But ZeroEyes is not the only tool the RTC has implemented to make passengers, bus drivers and employees feel safer.
There’s also the Panic Button Pilot Project — introduced in May 2023 and rolled out earlier this year. Drivers have been given nanodevices to hold in their pockets that, should any conflict occur, allow them to send a distress signal to RTC security. It reports the driver’s location with only the click of a button, which Atteberry said reduced response times and increased ease for bus drivers.
Starting today, the RTC announced on their website they will also be contracting a new security company — Inter-Con — to “enhance security.” The transition will bring 300 armed officers to transit centers and other RTC facilities across the valley for stronger enforcement of RTC rider rules. It was not made clear what this “stronger enforcement” would consist of.
Even the plexiglass separating drivers and passengers is being regularly upgraded, Atteberry said. The RTC is “constantly researching and looking at stronger and more durable enclosures,” which have already been installed in some of the new buses being rolled out.
“Ultimately, for Southern Nevada and in RTC, we want to see this grow, we want to help the community everywhere that we go,” Wilkins said of ZeroEyes’ AI program. “We’re very cognizant of the incidents that have happened in Vegas, and we hope that our software is at least a part of the layered solution that may be able to prevent or deter those types of incidents from happening in Vegas in the future.”
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