ZeroEyes deploys AI gun detection at Pennsylvania charter school

Executive Education Academy Charter School in Allentown has deployed ZeroEyes' AI weapon detection platform across its 500,000 sq ft K-12 campus.

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ZeroEyes, the Philadelphia-area AI weapons detection company founded by former Navy SEALs, has announced a new deployment of its gun detection platform at Executive Education Academy Charter School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The K-12 institution serves 1,735 students and around 300 staff across a 500,000 sq ft campus that includes a field house, four gyms and a football stadium currently under construction.

The deployment layers ZeroEyes' software onto the school's existing digital camera infrastructure, meaning no new camera hardware is required at the point of installation. When the system identifies a visible firearm, it routes imagery immediately to ZeroEyes' Operations Centre (ZOC), a round-the-clock facility staffed by personnel with US military and law enforcement backgrounds. Verified alerts, including a physical description, weapon type and last known location, are dispatched to local law enforcement and school security teams. The company says this process can complete within seconds of initial detection.

The deployment

Bob Lysek, CEO and founder of Executive Education Academy Charter School, said his institution had evaluated available options before selecting ZeroEyes. "After researching the available solutions and speaking with the ZeroEyes team, it became clear that their experience, professionalism, and proactive approach made them the right fit for our campus," he said. The school already operates access control systems, perimeter cameras and other security infrastructure; ZeroEyes is positioned as an additional proactive detection layer rather than a full replacement.

ZeroEyes co-founder and CEO Mike Lahiff described the school as demonstrating a "strong commitment to proactive campus safety", pointing to its combination of technology investment and law enforcement partnerships.

The company was founded in 2018 and holds a SAFETY Act Designation from the US Department of Homeland Security, a certification that classifies the platform as an approved anti-terrorism technology and limits certain civil liabilities for deploying organisations. ZeroEyes says its platform is now active across thousands of locations spanning state, local, education and federal customers in the US as well as markets including Mexico, India and Latin America.

Market context

AI-based physical security is a fast-growing vertical within the broader computer vision and video analytics market. School security spending in the US has increased substantially since legislative pushes following high-profile incidents, and vendors are competing to position AI detection as a complement to physical access controls and existing CCTV infrastructure. ZeroEyes' closest competitors include Evolv Technology, which focuses on weapons screening at entry points using electromagnetic sensing, and a number of video analytics firms offering gun-shape detection via standard surveillance feeds.

The human-verification model ZeroEyes uses, routing detections through a staffed operations centre before an alert is issued, is designed to reduce false-positive rates, a persistent concern in autonomous threat detection systems. This approach differentiates it from fully automated alerting pipelines, though it introduces a staffing dependency and a marginal latency cost that buyers should factor into their response planning.

From a regulatory standpoint, school deployments of AI surveillance systems are drawing increasing scrutiny from civil liberties organisations and some state legislatures. Several US states have introduced or passed bills requiring impact assessments before deploying AI monitoring in educational settings. Procurement teams should verify whether Pennsylvania's current guidance imposes disclosure or community consultation requirements ahead of rollout. No adverse regulatory findings against ZeroEyes were cited in the release.

The Allentown deployment adds to a growing list of education-sector customers for ZeroEyes as the company broadens its platform beyond pure firearms detection toward a wider situational awareness offering covering additional weapon types and threat categories.

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