By Corinne Worthington, Eleni Manis, Casey McLaughlin, Will Owen, and Nikita Ermolaev

Evolv is an AI weapon detector firm that has gained national attention following federal investigations, shareholder lawsuits, and close connections to Mayor Eric Adams. In this report, S.T.O.P. and IPVM present original research to reveal the high error rates and inaccuracy of Evolv weapon detectors in real-world conditions.

Key Findings Include:

• Many of New York City’s biggest tourist venues waste huge sums of money leasing Evolv sensors that frequently misidentify weapons and everyday objects;

• Venues continue to spend over 20 times the cost of comparable metal detectors on Evolv rentals, even as the company faces everything from federal investigations to lawsuits for false advertising and falsified earnings;

• S.T.O.P. and IPVM observed Evolv walk-through scanners in use at five top New York City attractions: three museums, one performing arts venue, and a sports stadium, as well as a popular bowling alley for comparison with the city’s largest venues;

• S.T.O.P. and IPVM’s research found Evolv sensors falsely claimed that one in four visitors had weapons, when, in practice, none did. On rainy days, the false alarm rate could reach 54%;

• Operators routinely ignored alarms or responded with only a cursory check, making the alerts almost entirely meaningless.

NOTE: S.T.O.P. and IPVM jointly conducted this study, including fieldwork and data collection. IPVM’s contributions focused on engineering analysis, survey methodology, and technical background, while S.T.O.P. took the lead in drafting the final report. S.T.O.P. reached out to Evolv and the venues for comment but the venues either failed to reply or declined to comment.

By David Siffert, Vibha Kannan, Dario Maestro. Jennifer Park, Claire Cleary, Taylor Skorpen, Emma Harman, Alissa Johnson, Alicia Abramson, Jimin Yoo. Patrick Li, Kevin Ye, Anya Weinstock, Marwa Sayed, Vianca Figueroa, Sophia Conrad, Malcom Rakshan. Nina Loshkajian, and Eleni Manis

Summary

This report, S.T.O.P., details the systematic failures of New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Rather than promoting transparency, New York’s open records law has become a law of discretion rather than obligation, governed by vague timelines, nonbinding oversight, and an appeals process that favors the agencies it was designed to hold accountable.

Key Findings Include:

• New York’s open records system systemically obstructs record seekers. Journalists don’t get the records they need to root out corruption; taxpayer watchdogs can’t scrutinize government spending; and the public can’t find out what their governments are doing.

• State and local agencies routinely frustrate Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”) requests by delaying excessively, by redacting records to the point of uselessness, and by claiming, groundlessly, that records are exempt from disclosure.

• Agencies face few consequences, because New Yorkers have little recourse when agencies block their requests. Agencies themselves decide first-round appeals; the state’s FOIL oversight body lacks any enforcement power; and the secondary appeals process is prohibitively costly and time-consuming.

• Unlike states such as Pennsylvania and Florida, which have implemented reforms such as binding oversight, consistent exemption interpretations, independent appeals, and enforceable timelines, New York lacks meaningful implementation mechanisms and continues to fall behind national transparency standards.

• Legislators must set enforceable deadlines for agencies, require agencies to report their reasons for denying records requests, require agencies to track their handling of FOIL requests, establish an independent appeals board and an empowered FOIL oversight committee, and shift the financial burden of appeals onto agencies that obstruct transparency.

By Jared Trujillo

The relationship between incarceration and poverty is circular, cyclical, and symbiotic – poverty is a cause of incarceration, and incarceration causes poverty. In the 1970’s and 1990’s, New York led the country in enacting draconian sentencing laws that required judges to sentence children and adults to longer periods of incarceration, while also reducing the ability of incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentences for participation in rehabilitative, vocational, and educational programming. For the past half century, these harsh sentencing laws have been the primary driver of mass incarceration in New York. As a result, generations of families with criminal legal system involvement have been damned to multigenerational poverty. This is most profound in low-income communities, particularly low-income Black and brown communities.

Incarceration often deprives children, partners, and other family members of a breadwinner. Even when breadwinners are released from incarceration, incomes for former imprisoned people are between ten and twenty percent lower than those who were never imprisoned. Even incomes for those formerly incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities are lower than the incomes of those who were not. Further, the children of incarcerated parents suffer from psychological, emotional, and educational trauma. These children are six times more likely to be incarcerated in their lives than their peers who do not have incarcerated parents. Romantic partners and co-parents of incarcerated people often struggle with anxiety, stress, and financial precarity. Mass incarceration in New York continues to be a policy choice, and sentencing reform is an important tool to fight individual and multigenerational poverty.

This article ultimately presents five legislative proposals that would reduce mass incarceration in New York. Repealing the juvenile offender statute will prevent children as young as 13 years old from being given life sentences; the Youth Justice and Opportunities Act would expand, strengthen, and establish alternative sentencing structures for people under 26 years old that would limit the length of incarceration while also sparing young people from the scarlet mark of a permanent criminal conviction; the Eliminate Mandatory Minimums Act would unchain judges from the rigidity and cruelty of New York’s current sentencing paradigm, while requiring them to consider noncustodial sentences and alternatives to incarceration; the Second Look Act would enable those who are already sentenced to long periods of incarceration to apply for a reduced sentence; and the Earned Time Act would enable incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentence for participating in educational, rehabilitative, or vocational programming.

26 CUNY L. Rev. 225 (2023). 42p.