NYPD officials said late Wednesday that the controversial Evolv weapons scanners Mayor Adams’ administration rolled out in the MTA subway system detected 12 knives and no guns over the course of a month-long pilot program this summer.
It’s unclear how significant those numbers are given the pilot was operated on a voluntary basis. Subway riders could decline to go through the detectors and still enter a station at a different turnstile, leaving anyone who might have had a weapon the option of skipping a scan.
But neither the NYPD nor Adams would say Thursday exactly what issue they were focused on during the pilot or how they view the data in terms of success. They also didn’t respond when asked how the long-awaited data informs the administration’s decision of whether to enter into a large-scale city contract with the producers of the weapons scanners, Massachusetts-based Evolv Technologies.
In late August — after the pilot concluded — Adams said the subway scan program had been “very impressive,” a comment that came months after he first announced that the pilot was his administration’s “Sputnik moment” and that it would help the NYPD “identify guns and other dangerous weapons” in the subway system.
The pilot — which is the subject of an ongoing city Department of Investigation probe — also logged 118 false positives, instances where the scanners incorrectly claimed to have detected weapons, the NYPD officials said. The pilot, which started in late July, involved a total 2,749 scans by the detectors at 20 subway stations, amounting to an average of about 91 scans per day and meaning the overall false positive rate clocked in at 4.29%, according to the NYPD.
Evolv did not return requests for comment, either, and the NYPD didn’t disclose whether any of the 12 knives seized resulted in arrests.
Donald Maye — head of operations at IPVM, a Pennsylvania-based surveillance industry trade group that has done extensive research on Evolv products — said the voluntary aspect of the pilot could help explain the “very low” number of scans conducted over the 30 days, especially in the context of the subways having more than 3 million daily riders.
Maye, whose group has conducted independent testing on Evolv’s scanners, also raised concern about the false positivity rates. In the subways, New Yorkers coming to and from work, school and stores carry all types of metal objects with them. Maye said the relatively low number of false positives indicates the NYPD may have kept the scanners at a low detection sensitivity setting, as New Yorkers’ regular belongings would otherwise have set off the scanners more frequently, a statement he cited to his own group’s tests on the scanners.
On the flip-side, when the scanners are kept at a low sensitivity rating, they run the risk of not detecting certain weapons, especially ones made of non-ferrous materials, which some guns are, Maye said.
That balancing act has been cited as a reason that Evolv’s scanners may not be well-suited for the subways. “Evolv hasn’t solved that problem,” said Maye. “That’s basically the rub with Evolv: Are they really adding significant value based on the cost of the system and what it can do?”
Adams and the NYPD pressed on deploying the Evolv tech in the subway system even after Peter George, the company’s CEO, told investors on a call in March that “subways in particular are not a place that we think is a good use-case [for Evolv’s technology].”
The Evolv data, disseminated by the NYPD around 9 p.m. Wednesday, comes after The News and other outlets have for months requested it from the department and the mayor’s office.
Earlier this month, The News first reported the Department of Investigation is probing the Adams administration’s acquisition of the Evolv scanners. Among other matters, the probe is scrutinizing how the administration vetted Evolv, whose executives include ex-NYPD officials with ties to senior Adams advisers, before allowing it to install its technology at various locations across the city, according to sources.
The DOI probe was launched as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission were already investigating Evolv over whether the company overstated to investors the technology’s ability to differentiate between weapons and innocuous metal objects. A group of Evolv investors have also filed a class-action lawsuit against Evolv alleging the company mischaracterized the abilities of its tech.
Evolv executives have said they’re cooperating in the FTC and SEC investigations. The class-action suit remains pending.
The Evolv technology has also attracted privacy and civil rights concerns from surveillance watchdogs, including the Legal Aid Society, which said the new data shows the subway pilot was “objectively a failure.”
“Given this failed pilot, all the other overwhelming evidence against using Evolv’s weapons detectors, and the surrounding controversies, including lawsuits and various investigations, we hope that this ill-conceived, fraught, and unwanted idea is finally shelved for good,” the group said in a statement.
Stoic Point Capital Management, a California-based hedge fund that is among Evolv’s early investors and frequently advocates for its products on social media, countered that the pilot was actually a success and noted the company’s program came at no cost to city taxpayers.
“In free testing Evolv stopped 12 concealed knives from entering the subway and had zero guns pass thru. All w/ just a 4% false pos rate. Keeping guns and knives out seems…like the whole point? Good job,” the hedge fund wrote on X.
With Evan Simko-Bednarski
