NYPD rolls out weapons detectors at MTA subway station in lower Manhattan

The NYPD deployed a weapons-detection system at the Fulton St.subway station in lower Manhattan on Friday, scanning straphangers for weapons for the first time in the system’s 119-year history.

The detectors — an AI-augmented array of cameras and traditional metal detector technology made by Massachusetts-based Evolv Technology — have been at the center of a controversial move by Mayor Adams to install such checkpoints at station entrances throughout the subway.

“We’re officially launching an initial pilot of a groundbreaking new weapons detection technology,” Adams said at a late Friday press conference at the station. “We will be deploying [the] electromagnetic detection system at select subway stations over the next month,” he said.

Adams made the comments surrounded by fellow members of the African American Mayor’s Association. MTA officials were not present at the Friday evening event.

Critics of the technology say it will slow access to the subways and infringe on straphangers rights. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society said Friday they were preparing legal action against the NYPD’s detection plan.

The detectors, which Evolv claims can quickly find knives or guns while ignoring more innocuous devices like laptops, phones and tablets, will be used in concert with the NYPD’s bag checks, police said Friday. Not every rider will be required to pass through, and, much like the bag check, straphangers can opt out of the scan. Riders who opt out will be denied entry to the subway.

“It could be every tenth rider, every 15th, every 20th – it’s going to vary,” said Michael Gerber, NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters. “if they have a bag, the bag is getting checked, and they have to go through the scanner.”

Reviews from the first batch of New Yorkers to encounter the device were mixed.

“It doesn’t take as long as I thought,” Jeff Tse, a 28-year-old corporate banker from Long Island City, told The News as he exited the scanner Friday night.

“I’m OK with it, it makes transit safer,” he said.

But Manhattanite Monica Harris, 59, called the scanner an invasion of privacy.

“It’s B.S. — baloney and salami,” she said. “It’s a dog and pony show, it looks good on T.V.”

The scanner, while large, is mobile, and police said it would be positioned at various stations throughout the day during the 30-day pilot program. The first run at Fulton St. Station lasted fewer than three hours.

Amid concerns the scanners would have trouble working underground, the NYPD has been quietly testing an Evolv scanner throughout the subway system for months, after Adams first showcased the technology at a March 28 presser following a spate of subway shootings. A transit source familiar with the matter told The News that the NYPD has conducted 22,000 test scans at 30 stations in the past eight weeks in anticipation of the start of the pilot. Those tests have not involved passengers.

The idea of adding metal detectors to the subway’s 472 stations has been suggested before. Adams pushed for the technology in 2022, after a gunman shot up an N train in Sunset Park, but the idea never materialized amid logistical concerns.

Those concerns have been shared privately by transit officials, who worry that slowing down the ingress to stations could cause separate safety and security concerns.

The company and its boosters claim the technology, which is currently used at several event venues around the city including Citi Field, has few false positives and won’t slow straphangers down as they rush to the train.

But the firm has been the subject of a Federal Trade Commission probe looking into whether Evolv has been honest with investors and customers about the technology’s capabilities, and is the subject of a “non-public, fact-finding inquiry” by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Evolv execs have said they are cooperating with both sets of regulators.

A group of investors filed a class action suit in May, alleging that Evolv has overstated the ability of its detectors to find knives and guns.

The technology has also raised the ire of the city’s civil libertarians.

“New Yorkers did not consent to give up their rights or be NYPD guinea pigs for over-hyped and error-prone surveillance tech,” a joint statement by The New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society said. “We are prepared to protect the right of all subway riders to be free from NYPD intrusion and harassment.”

Friday’s installation comes a day after the NYPD posted its impact and use policy for the technology — a posting that itself came one day after the Daily News reported the department had failed to do so within 45 days of the close of public comments as required by law.

Gerber, the NYPD’s legal czar, defended the detectors.

“We think this is completely lawful [and] consistent with the case law,” he told reporters. “We believe that the technology, as we’re deploying it, is going to be quite accurate — can’t say it’s perfect, but we believe it is quite accurate.”

Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed doubt Thursday that the machines would work as advertised. “People love the idea of a magical machine, but they’ll be furious of the reality of long lines and endless errors,” he said.

Evolv’s CEO has in the past expressed doubt that the technology would work properly in an underground transit system rife with potential electromagnetic interference. “Subways in particular are not a place that we think is a good use-case for us,” Evolv chief Peter George said on an investor call in March.

Adams, however, said last week that the recent run of NYPD tests had been encouraging.

“They did thousands of tests — thousands — to gauge the success of it,” Adams told The News last week. “We’re extremely impressed with the outcome.”

The Mayor has repeatedly said the city is not committed to using Evolv Technology’s equipment, and is open to working with other vendors — though so far only Evolv scanners have been showcased and no other systems have been tested in the transit system, according to sources familiar with the testing.