They'll have the final say on whether the system should be used in schools in Longmont or elsewhere. Proponents say the system is the most effective and least intrusive way to find guns and knives being carried into a school building. It detects only the metals used in weapons, and accurately pinpoints their location, size and number, said Steve Williams, vice president of Milestone Technology Inc. of Idaho Falls, Idaho. But it will be there to pick up a .357 Magnum. Units are placed at school entrances, and anyone coming in walks through an archway with their digitized images produced on a nearby monitor.
Any weapon detected is superimposed on the images.
There are no loud alarms, but the monitor issues a quiet alert to indicate a potential problem, Williams said. If a security guard is not watching the monitor, an electronic page sends an alert. It shows how you can turn a school into a smart building. Secure-Scan's technology goes back to efforts by the Defense Department to locate enemy submarines in murky water through precise scanning, said Bill Phillips, president of National Data Solutions. Skyline, which has an enrollment of about 1,300 students, had already been considering installing a building security network and agreed to be the testing ground for the Secure-Scan, said school officials.