“It was like eight cop cars that came pulling up for us,” Allen told WBAL-TV 11 News. “They started walking toward me with guns, talking about ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’”
“They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuff me. Then they searched me and found nothing,” he said.
Allen was handcuffed at gunpoint. Police later showed him the AI-captured image that triggered the alert. The crumpled Doritos bag in his pocket had been mistaken for a gun.
“It was mainly like, am I gonna die? Are they going to kill me? “They showed me the picture, said that looks like a gun, I said, ‘no, it’s chips.’”
The AI system behind the incident is part of Omnilert’s gun detection technology, introduced in Baltimore County Public Schools last year. It scans existing surveillance footage and alerts police in real time when it detects what it believes to be a weapon.
Omnilert later admitted the incident was a “false positive” but claimed the system “functioned as intended,” saying its purpose is to “prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.”
How can a journalist just write that without pushing back at all?
Because in that field, doing that is pretty much committing career suicide, especially if you do it too early in your career.
Which considering it was one of the local news stations that covered it, I’d bet you the journalist was either thinking nothing at all, or was telling themselves to not pushback on it because they don’t have enough connections to eat the shit that’ll get served to them if they do.