Mayor Eric Adams announced the start of a contentious new plan to put a gun-detecting scanner in the subway on Friday and warned that New Yorkers who refused to be scanned would be kicked out of the system.
Mr. Adams highlighted the scanner inside the busy Fulton Street subway station in Lower Manhattan, arguing that the technology would help make the subway safer.
“Many New Yorkers will be familiar with this type of technology — it’s not new, and it’s being used in big cities across the country,” Mr. Adams said, noting that scanners were already being used at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Citi Field.
A new pilot program will involve one scanner that will be moved to different stations over the next 30 days, city officials said. Mr. Adams said it would not cost the city any money.
Civil rights groups immediately called the scanners unconstitutional and said they were preparing to take legal action.
“New Yorkers did not consent to give up their rights or be N.Y.P.D. guinea pigs for overhyped and error-prone surveillance tech,” said a joint statement from the Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union. “We are prepared to protect the right of all subway riders to be free from N.Y.P.D. intrusion and harassment.”
Michael Gerber, the deputy commissioner for legal matters at the Police Department, said city officials were confident that the technology was legal and accurate. They will not alert New Yorkers in advance about where the scanner will be stationed.
The weapon-detection device is produced by Evolv Technology, a Massachusetts-based start-up; Mr. Adams did not mention the company’s name at the news conference.
The mayor’s office has said that the city has not entered into a contract with Evolv and that it was seeking proposals from other companies that offer similar technology.
On Thursday, the Police Department posted a detailed policy document online about the technology that said it would be deployed in areas where officers already conduct bag checks. A checkpoint supervisor will determine how often passengers are inspected, such as every 10th passenger, the document said.
Civil rights groups have raised concerns about the technology, including that scanners often offer false positives or flag items that are not illegal, such as laptops. They have also argued that the scanners are not needed because Mr. Adams himself has said that the subway has been getting safer.
With 472 stations, New York City’s subway is huge. It would be an expensive and logistically complex undertaking to introduce scanners to a wide swath of the system, and their use could slow down the flow of nearly 4 million daily riders.
Evolv, which was founded in 2013, has said that its devices are programmed with the “signatures” of certain items, allowing them to detect weapons. But the company has been sued by investors and users who have questioned the efficacy of its products. It has also faced federal investigations into its marketing practices.
Mr. Adams, who had been meeting with members of the African American Mayors Association this week, invited several mayors to the subway announcement to discuss gun violence. Mr. Adams pointed to a subway shooting in Brooklyn in 2022 that injured more than a dozen riders as an example of the type of incident he wants to prevent.
Mr. Adams made clear that riders must go through the scanner or exit the subway.
“If they refuse a bag check and a scan, they have to get off our system, because you have to follow the rules, and this is the rule,” he said.
The post A Weapons Scanner Arrives in the Subway. Adams Says It Isn’t Optional. appeared first on New York Times.