MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — School safety technology is advancing in the state as Rank One Computing continues to deploy their ROC Watch system in several West Virginia school districts.
The Colorado-based company established an East Coast headquarters in Morgantown two years ago to be closer to their facial recognition clients in the defense industry centered around Washington D.C.
ROC Watch Director of School Safety, former Doddridge County school superintendent, Adam Cheeseman said the system can detect threats in three different ways. Through facial recognition, license plate recognition or suspicious object/weapons detection. The threat notifications can be sent where the leaders of each district decide as soon as the system is triggered.
“It can pick up facial recognition, it can do license plate recognition,” Cheeseman said last week on MetroNews “Talkline.” “But most importantly in my opinion as a former superintendent and what really brought me to this role is it will pick up guns or suspicious objects.”
School personnel would be alerted to a suspicious item that could be a gun and could take action potentially before the threat could make entry into the building. The employees viewing the real-time display can make the distinction between a real threat or possibly a misidentified object.
“They would be able to adjudicate whether or not it is a credible threat, or if it is an officer who has a weapon that is permitted to be there,” Cheeseman said.
School officials can preload sex offender lists, lists from the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, or any other screening criteria for the software to use. The system would detect a person on a prohibited list and provide a warning to school officials who can take action, again prior to the threat entering the building in most cases.
“Any list that can be populated can be put into the software,” Cheeseman said. “So, it will alert county schools, secretaries, and the front office as to who is at the front door.”
In West Virginia, concepts are currently being tested in Harrison and Clay counties. The full system or portions are being tested in Putnam, Doddridge and Marion counties.
“It has detected sex offenders in Marion County specifically and it has been very successful in that,” Cheeseman said.
Cheeseman said the system can be deployed completely or in blocks. Schools could opt only for facial recognition or only weapons detection depending on privacy or budget concerns.
“County schools can come onboard and do just take the weapons detection or the suspicious object detection and not do the facial recognition piece so it can be customized.”
West Virginia native Scott Swann is the founder and CEO of the company.