PEORIA, Ill. – The Peoria Public School Board is making an upgrade to its security system that could help identify some potential problems before they become problems, like the potential for a school shooting.
Board members approved upgrading security cameras at district buildings they did not identify so that Artificial Intelligence technology is used to detect things like guns.
“The incident that happened in Uvalde, Texas — where the young man wrecked the vehicle outside the building, walked into the building with the long rifle, and made his way to a classroom — with ‘IntelliSee,’ we’ll get that information right when he walked out of that vehicle,” said Demario Boone, PPS Director of School Safety.
The board Monday) night approved spending $40,000 on upgrades allowing for the cameras to pick out potential safety risks, from the potential for slip-and-fall accidents, to someone who may try to enter a school building with a weapon.
“You’ve already spent the money on the cameras. They’re only used after the fact, so you can look and see what happened,” said Maureen Pajerski, Chief Commercial Officer, IntelliSee, to the PPS Board. “This turns it into something proactive and will tell you what’s happening when it’s happening. It’s pretty impossible for anybody to monitor cameras.”
The system contacts pre-programmed officials immediately upon identifying a potential threat. It uses artificial intelligence technology to identify those risks, and Pajerski says it only gets better and more accurate over time.
“I tell people ‘hopefully and probably you’ll only see false positives with guns,’” said Pajerski. “The likelihood of somebody holding something that looks like a gun is higher probability.”
You can see an example of how the system identifies threats in the photo above.
