A 16‑year‑old at Kenwood High School in Essex, Maryland, was surprised when eight police cars appeared behind him after an artificial‑intelligence gun‑detection system mistakenly marked his empty chip bag as a weapon. The incident, captured on body‑camera footage released by the Baltimore Police Department, shows officers quickly realizing the mix‑up and looking for the source of the alert.
At the school’s parking lot, Taki Allen was waiting for his ride when he slipped an empty bag of chips into his pocket. The school’s real‑time AI system saw the bag and tagged it as a gun, triggering an emergency alert. police, many of whom were armed, rushed to the scene, demanded Allen to the ground, and handcuffed him.
When the officers reviewed the security camera, they traced the flagged image to a trash can and discovered the bag of chips. A school resource officer explained that the AI rarely “gets it wrong,” but AI isn’t perfect. The system still worked as designed: it raised a threat signal and required human verification before any law‑enforcement response would be deployed.
Superintendent Dr. Myriam Rogers said the alert was canceled by the Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) Safety Team, but the principal had already begun coordinating a police response before seeing the cancellation. “The system identified a possible threat and handed it to a human for review, which is exactly what our safety protocol requires,” Rogers told a local news station.
Omnilert, the company that provides the AI‑driven gun‑detection platform used by Kenwood High, confirmed that its system combines machine learning with human oversight. The alert was marked resolved after the investigators confirmed the item was not a firearm, and Omnilert had no further role in the incident.
Allen said he feels unsafe walking around the school after football practice and that the mishandling of a chip bag is unacceptable. “I don’t want to risk feeling unsafe just because a bag of chips was mistaken for a gun,” he said. The incident has sparked debate about the reliability of AI tools in school safety, highlighting the need for clear protocols and rapid human confirmation to prevent similar scares in the future.
Source: Fox News
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