FAIRMONT, W.Va. (WBOY) — Days after the Georgia school shooting, law enforcement saw an increase in threats of violence against schools, including many here in West Virginia. Now, Fairmont Senior High School has become the first school in Marion County to upgrade its security systems in response.
Rank One Computing (ROC) , which has its east coast headquarters in Morgantown, is the company behind the new weapon detection software installed at Fairmont Senior High School this week. The ROC Watch software is not metal detection, but rather an algorithm installed into already existing security cameras.
“According to the software and the algorithm in that camera would capture the gun and then would put a red box around the gun and around the person’s face and then in real time it would alert the front office. A stream would start flashing and an audible noise would be heard that would say gun detected and it would tell and show the picture as to where—which camera and where that person would be,” said Adam Cheeseman, ROC Director of School and Community Safety and former superintendent of Doddridge County Schools.
Superintendents can designate what other officials can receive alerts, like law enforcement, to enact quick responses. “If we can save five, 10 seconds, you know, that will save lives,” Cheeseman said.
Cheeseman explained to 12 News that this technology works well in tandem with metal detectors and that the interior cameras are also equipped with this technology, which allows them to still detect a firearm even if the person was able to conceal it from the outdoor cameras.
Marion County Schools Superintendent, Donna Heston, said weapon detection is the second phase of heightened security across the county as all schools already have facial recognition software.
Fairmont Senior High School installs weapon detection system “It’s a commitment through our local board of education and one of the priorities definitely for them is for the safety and security of our students and so when the technology was presented to us and demonstrated, this was an opportunity,” said Heston.
ROC’s facial recognition can scan multiple databases to determine who might enter the school, including identifying from sex offender lists and regional jails. Both Marion County and Doddridge County were early adopters of ROC’s facial recognition system almost three years ago.
Officials said that the new weapon detection system in Fairmont Senior will soon be in every Marion County School. They added that because it’s part of a camera system, it shouldn’t interfere with students’ daily lives.
“The algorithm is trained by just flooding the system with images…and saying what is a gun and what is not a gun” said Cheeseman. He added that even if there’s a toy that may appear like a gun or is a toy gun, notifications will still be sent and officials can act accordingly.
Dozens of schools across multiple counties have already installed different levels of the ROC system including all schools in Doddridge County, all schools in Putnam County and all in Marion County.
“The major expense comes in the hard drive right, or the server cost, but once the district wants to purchase the server, they own that server. It’s not ours, it’s not our data, it’s their data,” Cheeseman said.
Prices range based on county size and number of cameras, and Cheeseman said ROC offers a discounted rate to West Virginia schools as it has its east coast headquarters in Morgantown, and a West Virginian CEO, with many West Virginian employees.
“We’d like for West Virginia to be the showpiece, right? Kind of the center of excellence for school safety,” said Cheeseman.
When it comes to privacy concerns, Cheeseman said little has changed for students. “Every county already has a server that they’re operating from, so when the county buys the server from us and we bring it and install it, the data still rests with the county. So it’s a separate server but it’s the same data that would be going into that server and that county owns it,” said Cheeseman.
The plan is to continue expanding the weapon detection algorithm to detect other potential weapons in the future.
As for the future of ROC’s security offerings, Cheeseman said there will soon be an operations center out of Morgantown staffed by personnel like off-duty, or retired law enforcement to watch security camera footage as an added layer and extra security to offer to schools.
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