Look, guns in schools might not be an automatically awful thing, but when those guns are in the hands of students instead of responsible adults, there’s a problem. That’s one of the few things we can all seem to agree on.
And while AI is being looked at in a lot of places to detect firearms, the technology isn’t without its problems. I mean, at least one system thought a bag of Doritos was a gun.
They might be banging, but that doesn’t make them a firearm.
Yet in Gulf Breeze, Florida, police there are looking at a completely different system. It’s a system of a very good boy or girl who will detect guns instead of technology.
The Gulf Breeze Police Department has begun accepting donations to raise up to $20,000 to purchase a dog it can train to locate firearms on school property within the city.
The agency received permission to begin taking in funds at the Dec. 1 meeting of the Gulf Breeze City Council. Chief Rick Hawthorne said without the go ahead, the Police Department would not have been able to collect money for a previously unbudgeted item.
Hawthorne said the donations the department are seeking will also go toward training and travel associated with the purchase.
It was the city’s school resource officer who came up with the idea of purchasing the gun detection dog that will also serve as a Police Department student ambassador, Hawthorne said. For that reason the agency is looking at buying a German short-haired pointer, a dog he described as looking like “a cross between a hound dog and a bloodhound.”
“That was the breed suggested,” he said. “They’re friendly dogs, good to work with. We want a dog kids can relate to and one that will allow our officers to establish conversations with kids that foster the building of relationships at our different schools.”
Not every kid is fond of dogs, but a lot of them are, which is going to make the dog something they won’t really blink at.
Unfortunately, with this just being one dog, it’s unlikely that it’ll be a system that will check for guns as students come into the school for the day, but will instead either be deployed as needed or randomly.
One major upside over a dog instead of artificial intelligence is that there will be an officer with the pup; he or she will be there to respond rather than sending a SWAT team to bust a kid over Cool Ranch chips.
At $20,000 a pop, though, it’s unlikely we’re going to see many such dogs used in schools, but I really think that people should at least consider it. Not only is it a solid “technology” that we’ve used for decades, but false positives won’t be nearly as catastrophic.
And why not have man’s best friend help protect our children? Dogs might not always get it right, but at least we understand dogs and why they do things. We have no idea what an AI computer system is “thinking” at any given moment.
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