Maybe they ought to mount this on chain-link fences also. 
Gun-detector system demonstrated for school district
By Stacy Nick
The Coloradoan
Poudre School District officials put a state-of-art weapon-detection system through its paces Thursday but came away unconvinced the pricey system should be placed in local schools.
The Non-Obtrusive Weapons Detection system, or NOWD, is designed to be built into existing walls, floors or ceilings. The system was demonstrated for PSD officials and local law-enforcement officers at Fort Collins City Hall.
People walking through the system don't even know it's there, said Troy Krenning, law-enforcement program manager for the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center in Denver.
"Also, this detects guns and only guns - not keys or cell phones or anything else that would hang you up at an airport metal detector," he said.
PSD Securities Director Ellyn Dickmann, Superintendent Don Unger and other officials tried out the system, walking through it with unloaded handguns provided for the test by the Fort Collins police department.
But they said there are no plans to test the system in PSD schools.
Last year, PSD instituted the Links program, which works to take a proactive stance against violence, Dickmann said. The program emphasizes violence prevention education and anger management and utilizes therapists working together with school resource officers, teachers and students.
"That's the approach we should be taking," she said.
In the past, district officials have said they don't want to throw money at the problem of school violence by purchasing
"hardware" such as metal detectors.
George Keller, inventor of the NOWD system, said he hopes to convince the district to give it a one-year trial run in several schools. But the test would cost the district $1 million.
The system costs roughly $7,500 per installation, NOWD representatives said, compared to a metal detector's range of $5,000 to $25,000, not including personnel to run the detector.
But Fort Collins High School has more than 40 outside entrances to the building, said Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Schools Joe Hendrickson.
That, combined with putting detection devices within the school, would be an expensive endeavor.
Keller, a retired professor from the Colorado School of Mines, began working on NOWD seven years ago after a gunman walked into a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora and opened fire, killing four people.
The system uses a low-strength magnetic field that can differentiate between the metal in a person's house keys and the metal in a 22-caliber handgun.
"This is definitely technology that the district needs to look at," Dickmann said. "We always want to be up to date on the latest technologies."
One thing that impressed her was the system could be altered to also detect large knives.
The alarm goes off within .2 second of a person walking through with a weapon, NOWD representatives said. It requires no human supervision, as does a traditional metal detector.
When the system is triggered, a hidden camera hooked to a modem takes a picture of the person and sends a message to administrators and school resource officers.
Lincoln Junior High Principal John Olander said NOWD would be an effective deterrent and more inviting than a traditional metal detector but wouldn't be foolproof.
"If someone truly wants to get in with a gun, it will happen," Olander said.
Mayor Ray Martinez, who also attended the demonstration, said the system still could help prevent school tragedies like the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.
That day wasn't the first time the killers brought guns to school, Martinez said. A system like NOWD could have alerted administrators of a potential problem.
The system, which also can be installed in hallways, could have alerted officers to the shooters' specific locations in the building so they could have reacted faster, Keller said.
Several Colorado school districts are looking into the system, including Denver Public Schools, Keller said. The system is being installed in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
© Copyright 2000, the Fort Collins Coloradoan
Gun-detector system demonstrated for school district
By Stacy Nick
The Coloradoan
Poudre School District officials put a state-of-art weapon-detection system through its paces Thursday but came away unconvinced the pricey system should be placed in local schools.
The Non-Obtrusive Weapons Detection system, or NOWD, is designed to be built into existing walls, floors or ceilings. The system was demonstrated for PSD officials and local law-enforcement officers at Fort Collins City Hall.
People walking through the system don't even know it's there, said Troy Krenning, law-enforcement program manager for the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center in Denver.
"Also, this detects guns and only guns - not keys or cell phones or anything else that would hang you up at an airport metal detector," he said.
PSD Securities Director Ellyn Dickmann, Superintendent Don Unger and other officials tried out the system, walking through it with unloaded handguns provided for the test by the Fort Collins police department.
But they said there are no plans to test the system in PSD schools.
Last year, PSD instituted the Links program, which works to take a proactive stance against violence, Dickmann said. The program emphasizes violence prevention education and anger management and utilizes therapists working together with school resource officers, teachers and students.
"That's the approach we should be taking," she said.
In the past, district officials have said they don't want to throw money at the problem of school violence by purchasing
"hardware" such as metal detectors.
George Keller, inventor of the NOWD system, said he hopes to convince the district to give it a one-year trial run in several schools. But the test would cost the district $1 million.
The system costs roughly $7,500 per installation, NOWD representatives said, compared to a metal detector's range of $5,000 to $25,000, not including personnel to run the detector.
But Fort Collins High School has more than 40 outside entrances to the building, said Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Schools Joe Hendrickson.
That, combined with putting detection devices within the school, would be an expensive endeavor.
Keller, a retired professor from the Colorado School of Mines, began working on NOWD seven years ago after a gunman walked into a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora and opened fire, killing four people.
The system uses a low-strength magnetic field that can differentiate between the metal in a person's house keys and the metal in a 22-caliber handgun.
"This is definitely technology that the district needs to look at," Dickmann said. "We always want to be up to date on the latest technologies."
One thing that impressed her was the system could be altered to also detect large knives.
The alarm goes off within .2 second of a person walking through with a weapon, NOWD representatives said. It requires no human supervision, as does a traditional metal detector.
When the system is triggered, a hidden camera hooked to a modem takes a picture of the person and sends a message to administrators and school resource officers.
Lincoln Junior High Principal John Olander said NOWD would be an effective deterrent and more inviting than a traditional metal detector but wouldn't be foolproof.
"If someone truly wants to get in with a gun, it will happen," Olander said.
Mayor Ray Martinez, who also attended the demonstration, said the system still could help prevent school tragedies like the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.
That day wasn't the first time the killers brought guns to school, Martinez said. A system like NOWD could have alerted administrators of a potential problem.
The system, which also can be installed in hallways, could have alerted officers to the shooters' specific locations in the building so they could have reacted faster, Keller said.
Several Colorado school districts are looking into the system, including Denver Public Schools, Keller said. The system is being installed in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
© Copyright 2000, the Fort Collins Coloradoan