The Chicago Transit Authority is expanding a surveillance program that uses artificial intelligence to detect guns on L platforms, despite protests by civil liberty advocates who question the lack of public input and the technology’s effectiveness.
The current $200,000 pilot program with ZeroEyes has detected 10 guns and resulted in six arrests since it began last summer, according to the CTA. But the technology, limited now to 250 cameras on train platforms, did nothing to alert police to a quadruple murder on a Blue Line train in September.
Despite that record, the CTA’s board of directors on Wednesday approved a $1.2 million contract with ZeroEyes to expand the technology to 1,500 cameras through the summer of 2026.
Acting CTA President Nora Leerhsen praised the program for taking advantage of the agency’s vast network of 33,000 cameras. Many of the cameras offer high-definition digital video that can be analyzed by ZeroEyes’ gun-detecting software.
“This is a proactive use of those cameras,” Leerhsen said.
Kevin Ryan, CTA vice president of security, told the board that ZeroEyes has made 82 detections, 10 of which were determined to be actual firearms. Police arrested six people, confiscating six guns, Ryan said. One of those arrests involved a suspect who had robbed two CTA patrons, he said.
Ryan said he considered using ZeroEyes over other systems because it alerts police only after an employee at the company reviews the detection to determine if a gun looks real. Ryan said police are not notified “98%” of the time if the gun is obviously a toy, like a Nerf gun, he said.
Although the program is being expanded to six times as many cameras, the technology will still be limited to cameras on station platforms, according to a CTA spokeswoman. The technology is designed to detect guns that are carried openly.
The CTA has cited safety for expanding its surveillance network, but the technology has not shown results, according to ACLU Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka.
He criticized the CTA for again including no public discussion in choosing to spend more money “to support a technological solution to a human problem.”
“For more than two decades, riders on CTA buses and trains have been promised that the next surveillance camera system … or some other surveillance technology will make all feel safer and more confident on the trains,” Yohnka said.
“How much more secure could CTA trains and buses be if, rather than expend millions of dollars on technology, the money would have been invested in measures that actually improve safety? This is simply another missed opportunity,” he said.
The CTA is not disclosing which cameras and stations will use the software. Ryan told the board that the CTA will choose which cameras to monitor by using historical crime data.
In February, the Sun-Times reported that ZeroEyes has also been piloted in a handful of Chicago police districts.
ZeroEyes was founded in 2018 in the suburbs of Philadelphia by veterans in response to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The SEPTA transit system in Philadelphia ended its pilot program with ZeroEyes last year, telling a reporter at The Trace that its mostly analog cameras were not compatible with the technology.
The technology has also been used at Navy Pier. But ZeroEyes reportedly did nothing to alert police before or after a double murder by a “disgruntled” employee at the tourist attraction in November.