Alleged False Positive by Omnilert AI Gun Detection System Prompts Police Search at Baltimore County High School

October 20, 2025

A student at Kenwood High School in Baltimore County, Maryland experienced a false alert from the Omnilert-operated AI gun detection system. The empty Doritos bag was mistakenly identified as a firearm, leading to an armed police response and the detainment of the student before the error was realized. This incident has sparked public concern and a review of school security protocols. Omnilert has expressed regret for the event.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.643, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.631, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.626, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: baltimore-county-public-schools
Alleged developer: omnilert
Alleged harmed parties: taki-allen, kenwood-high-school-students

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1250

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.