Evolv weapons screening pilot in the New York City subway

Municipal police department screening a transit system · Weapons screening · Trade press

The job

The New York Police Department ran a 30-day pilot of Evolv walkthrough weapons scanners at subway station entrances starting July 27, 2024, rotating the units across 20 stations. Officers screened riders passing through the portals on a voluntary basis, and the department released the outcome figures roughly two months after the pilot ended, following repeated press requests.

The agency

20 subway stations hosted the rotating pilot (reported-by-trade-press); systemwide scale: not published in the cited accounts

The equipment

Evolv walkthrough weapons detection scanners (reported-by-trade-press)

The published numbers

2,749 total scans over 30 days at 20 stations (reported-by-trade-press); 0 guns found (reported-by-trade-press); 12 knives found (reported-by-trade-press); 118 false positives (reported-by-trade-press); the NYPD did not pay for the pilot and had not contracted with Evolv at the time of reporting (reported-by-trade-press); pilot cost to the city: not published

Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.

What we would check before believing it applies to you

This entry is included as a caution. The pilot's own numbers, zero guns and 118 false positives across 2,749 scans, led the Legal Aid Society to call it objectively a failure, and the data came out only after sustained press requests, which is itself a transparency lesson. Screening was voluntary and riders could enter at another turnstile, so the counts cannot establish much either way in an open transit system. Evolv as a company has faced federal regulatory scrutiny and litigation over claims about what the technology can actually do, which any buyer must weigh independently of a vendor demonstration. An agency considering walkthrough screening should define its success metric before the pilot, commit to publishing results on a schedule, and model false-positive handling at realistic throughput, because secondary screening is where the staffing cost and the civil liberties risk both concentrate.

Sources