AI technology that taps in to school cameras detects brandished weapons in seconds

LA PORTE CITY — Rob Carter, director of sales for a security service that uses AI technology to detect weapons, walked the halls of Union High School Friday carrying an airsoft gun and wearing a yellow vest.

In another room, leaders from Iowa school districts watched how the security service — called ZeroEyes — alerted to a gun detected by the AI technology integrated with existing cameras in the school.

ZeroEyes aims to reduce response times and provide valuable situational awareness to the location of a threat, the gun type and a description of the perpetrator to first responders. This potentially could save lives in active shooter situations, company officials said.

Union Community School District entered into a five-year contract earlier this year with ZeroEyes to mitigate gun-related violence and mass shootings by reducing response times and providing real-time monitoring.

With ZeroEyes, local law enforcement and on-site security personnel and school officials are alerted as quickly as three to five seconds after a brandished weapon is detected, Carter said in an interview with The Gazette.

On average, a gun is brandishes around seven minutes before a shot is ever fired, Carter said. “Seconds matter.”

Once the AI technology detects a weapon, the image is sent to ZeroEyes’ operations center, where a human can confirm whether a firearm is present.

The Union district hosted a safety and security seminar Friday with ZeroEyes to demonstrate the AI gun detection to other Iowa school leaders from Clayton Ridge, Grundy Center, Starmont and West Central districts.

There are more than 15 school districts in Iowa that use the technology. ZeroEyes has its headquarters in Philadelphia and was founded in 2018. Their technology is in hundreds of school districts worldwide, Carter said.

ZeroEyes costs the Union district just over $43,000 a year for five years and is being paid for through Secure an Advanced Vision for Education — which is funded by a statewide sales tax — and the Physical Plant and Equipment Levy, a property tax levy. Both funding mechanisms can be used for infrastructure needs.

Carter, a former Navy SEAL who lives in Waukee, said cameras in school are “a great layer of security,” but they often are not actively monitored. ZeroEyes can provide that additional monitoring.

Not every camera in the Union district is linked with ZeroEyes. The company does a site survey to identify which cameras would be most beneficial for their platform based on where firearms are most likely to be brandished first.

“We detect real firearms every single week on school campuses and in public spaces,” Carter said. “We’ve had dozens of arrests based on ZeroEyes detections in 2025 alone already. It’s hard to quantify what doesn’t happen, to say specifically what was stopped.”

Union district Superintendent John Howard said more than 150 cameras in the district — which has a K-12 enrollment of 975 students — are integrated with ZeroEyes AI technology.

Howard said the January 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa, cemented his decision to bring ZeroEyes to the Union district. An 11-year-old middle school student and the Perry High School principal were killed in the attack by a 17-year-old student of the school.

The technology was installed in the Union district in March.

Howard said he already has received three alerts detecting toy guns on school grounds. Law enforcement are not notified when the gun is verified to be a fake.

Rob Busch, superintendent of Starmont and West Central school districts, said he’s interested in ZeroEyes because of the “distance” between the districts and law enforcement.

School officials are considering adding the proposal to a bond referendum that could go to voters in the districts this November.

The districts have combined student bodies of about 800.

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