Snowline Joint Unified introduces AI-enabled camera system with firearm detection, license-plate reading and vape sensors

Snowline Joint Unified officials gave the school board and the public a live demonstration of a new AI-enabled campus surveillance system that adds firearm-detection alerts, license-plate recognition and environmental "vape" sensors while nearly doubling the district's camera fleet.

The presentation, delivered by Chief Todd Espindola, Director Rick Hernandez and staff, outlined what they described as a staged roll-out of roughly 600 IP cameras districtwide and new analytic features intended to speed investigations and give school leaders and police earlier notice of threats.

Board members were shown how the system can search footage using natural-language queries, follow a vehicle or a person across cameras, and send automated alerts when a firearm or a flagged license plate appears. Hernandez demonstrated an interface that searches by clothing or object ("person with Dodgers hat") and an automated "journey" function that stitches clips from multiple cameras into chronological video.

School and police officials stressed several operational limits and safeguards. Espindola said the district stores footage on local servers with 180 days of retention and more than a petabyte of local storage; a cloud interconnect exists only to support the access layer and certain analytics. District staff said any video transmitted to cloud services is deleted after processing and that…