Student handcuffed after AI system mistook bag of chips for weapon

A Baltimore County high school student was ordered to the ground, handcuffed, and searched after an artificial intelligence system monitoring school cameras falsely identified a crumpled Doritos bag as a firearm.
The student, sitting outside after football practice, says officers arrived with guns drawn and detained him before confirming he had no weapon. [see video]

"It was like eight cop cars that came pulling up for us... They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me." — Student account reported by local media.

What happened

Baltimore County Public Schools use an AI gun detection system that analyzes existing school camera feeds and sends alerts when a possible weapon is identified. The system triggered an alert at Kenwood High School, police responded, and the student was detained and searched. School officials say the alert was canceled after review, but law enforcement had already engaged and detained the student.

Fourth Amendment issues and unreasonable search concerns

• Basis for police action: The response appears to have been triggered solely by an automated alert. The Constitution requires searches and seizures to be reasonable and usually to rest on probable cause. Relying on an unverified AI signal raises questions about whether officers had lawful grounds for such an intrusive response.
• Technology as proxy for human observation: If a software flag is treated as equivalent to a human eyewitness, the threshold for searches and detentions may be lowered. Faulty detection can therefore produce unlawful intrusions on privacy and liberty.
• Lack of transparency and accountability: There is often little public information about how these systems decide a given image indicates a weapon, how often they make mistakes, or what review procedures exist before police are called in force. That lack of oversight compounds Fourth Amendment concerns.
• Disproportionate response risk: Automated alerts can trigger armed, tactical law enforcement responses that are disproportionate to the actual risk. For a student holding a snack bag to be confronted at gunpoint suggests the response was far more severe than the actual situation warranted.

Why this matters

Schools have a legitimate interest in safety. But safety systems that lack reliability or transparency can produce harmful, invasive outcomes. This incident shows how errors in automated monitoring can quickly escalate into situations that implicate citizens' Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

story at https://www.wesh.com/article/student-handcuffed-ai-mistook-bag-chips-wea...