Wake County considering weapons detectors following school shootings
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Wake County schools consider expanding weapons detectors beyond events to school days.
- Officials cite behavior changes and campus access as key implementation hurdles.
- District reported 393 weapon incidents in 2023–24, including a fatal campus stabbing.
The Wake County school system is taking a closer look at using weapons detectors following recent highly publicized local and national school shooting incidents.
The Wake County school board’s safety and security committee held a closed-session discussion Tuesday with school security staff on the use of weapons detectors. The discussion comes after gunshots were fired Aug. 15 at a football jamboree at Southeast Raleigh High and the Aug. 27 school shooting in Minneapolis that left two children dead.
Weapons detectors are used by Wake at extracurricular events — such as athletics — but not to scan students entering during the school day. Superintendent Robert Taylor told reporters on Tuesday that weapons detections systems are effective, but their use would require “behavior changes” in schools.
Currently, high schools allow some students, usually juniors and seniors, to leave campus for lunch. Taylor said they’d be back to “square one” if they didn’t scan students who are returning to campus after lunch.
“You would either have to close the campus and say that they are not allowed to leave once they’ve been scanned and enter the building,” Taylor said. “Or if you remain with an open campus and they will have the egress to the area where those units are available so that students can be scanned.”
Some school districts use weapons detectors
For the 2023-24 school year, Wake County schools reported eight cases of possession of a firearm and 385 cases of possession of a weapon that wasn’t a firearm. That school year included the fatal on-campus stabbing of a student at Southeast Raleigh High School.
Some North Carolina school systems, such as Johnston County, have weapons detectors at the entrance of every school. The system uses ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic fields to scan for concealed items that the device has been trained to recognize as weapons.
Taylor said Wake has looked at how other districts are using the systems.
Taylor said they’re looking at things such as whether schools use the systems the whole day or part of the day.
“My biggest question is always have you as a district looked at the human element of any system that you deploy,” Taylor said. “Those are the things that we want to ask school districts.”
During the open portion of Tuesday’s committee meeting, school board member Wing Ng asked what obstacles might exist for Wake using weapons detectors. But Kendrick Scott, Wake’s senior director of security, told Ng ”hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised when we get into closed session.”
Football jamboree shooting update
The safety committee was also scheduled Tuesday to get a closed-session update into the investigation of the gunfire incident at Southeast Raleigh High’s jamboree.
Football teams from eight high schools held a pre-season scrimmage at Southeast Raleigh High’s stadium on Aug. 15. The jamboree was cut short when students ran out onto the field.
After the jamboree ended, multiple fights erupted in the parking lot and an individual discharged a firearm. No one was injured. Raleigh Police said Tuesday there have been no arrests.
This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 5:29 PM.
