Internal emails show how a controversial gun detecting system wound up in NYC

Magic Kingdom: A Sputnik Moment for Gun Detectors in the New York City Metro Stations: Evolv at the Magic Kingdom

Disney’s flagship park, Magic Kingdom, averaged over 46,000 visitors per day in 2022, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The New York City subway system averaged more than 3.1 million passengers per day over the past four years. Maybe it’s not a perfect parallel after all.

“As I mentioned, Linda Reid, VP Security for Walt Disney World (Florida) has known us since 2014 and deployed many of our systems at the Parks and Disney Springs,” Evolv co-founder Anil Chitkara wrote in an email to Adams’ office on February 7th, 2022. “They’ve had success screening for weapons with Evolv Express … There may be some interesting parallels to how you are thinking about everyone’s role in security.”

The subway was not included in Evolv’s pitch to Adams. In fact, on a recent investor call, Evolv CEO Peter George said the detectors aren’t geared towards public transit, Wired reports.

When New York City Mayor Eric Adams was first introduced to a representative from Evolv, the AI gun detection company, he was given a list of places the scanners could be used, including hospitals, schools, Times Square, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. According to emails, Adams had been swayed by the fact that Evolv had disclosed their Disney client.

After an in-person meeting a few days later, Evolv cofounder Anil Chitkara made another attempt to sell the company’s technology—through name-dropping.

Despite this, following the death of a man who was pushed onto the subway tracks in late March, Adams announced that Evolv’s gun-detection scanners would be tested in the city’s train stations. “This is a Sputnik moment,” Adams said on March 28. “When President Kennedy said we were going to put a man on the moon.”

Back in 2022, Adams tasked New York’s deputy mayor, Philip Banks III, with finding a gun-detection solution. Before joining the administration, he served as NYPD’s chief of department, but resigned in 2014 amid a federal bribery and corruption investigation in which he was later named as an unindicted coconspirator. Banks wasn’t charged.