Titans confident fans are safe from deadly weapons after new detection system installed at Nissan Stadium faces scrutiny

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - When the Tennessee Titans kick off their final preseason of the 2023 season against the New England Patriots, Nissan Stadium will have already hosted 14 events, including the CMA Festival, a three-night concert run by Taylor Swift, and Monster Energy Supercross.

Laura Harris traveled from Alabama to see George Strait play at Nissan, and like many of the hundreds of thousands of fans passing through the stadium gates this year, venue security was one of the last things on her mind.

“I know this stadium is safe,” Harris said. “I’m not worried about it at all.”

That mindset is exactly what the Titans, who run security at Nissan Stadium, want when it comes to fans thinking about security.

“That’s for us to think about. That’s for us to be concerned with,” said Kate Guerra, the Titans Vice President of Marketing and Communication.

“When someone comes to Nissan Stadium for a game or to see a concert, we want that to be an enjoyable fan experience,” Guerra said. “But if someone does think about the security of our building while they’re here, we want them to feel very safe, and feel like we have been very thorough.”

Guerra says security at Nissan is a layered system of procedures, personnel, and equipment, that begins in the parking lot, extends to the stadium gates, and goes directly into the venue itself.

One of those security components is the Evolv weapons detection system that every fan walks through before presenting their tickets and entering the stadium gates. Using sensors and artificial intelligence, Evolv scanners can detect weapons like knives and guns, and disregard benign metal objects like eyeglass cases, cell phones, and umbrellas.

Multiple fans can walk through Evolv’s tower like scanners at the same time, and there is no need to stop and empty pockets, unless the sensors are triggered, and the system light turns red. The result is the security line at Nissan Stadium moves much quicker than security at a venue using traditional metal detectors.

“The system will do 4,000 people an hour,” said Mike Ellenbogen, Co-Founder and Chief Innovative Officer at Massachusetts-based Evolv-Technologies, Inc. “The technology is very well suited for stadiums, arenas, theme parks, and places where lots of people are moving through.”

But over the past year, the company’s technology has come under heavy scrutiny, after two stabbings at high schools in Ohio and New York, where Evolv scanners were in place but failed to detect the knives used in the attacks.

“Evolv claims that it is a weapons detector and that can create a false sense of security, because the system is not perfect,” said Nikita Ermolaev, a research engineer with IPVM.

IPVM is a security and technology group that has been very critical of Evolv for the past couple of years, claiming the company has oversold its scanners and technology to customers like the Titans.

“I want people to be critical about Evolv’s marketing,” Ermolaev said. “And we do believe that Evolv needs to be transparent.”

Ermolaev points to a private field study from 2021, conducted at a sports venue in Ohio, that revealed safety flaws, including a micro gun and several knives failing to get flagged by the system during multiple walkthroughs.

IPVM claims the company redacted parts of the study when it was released to the public that year, to deflect attention away from vulnerabilities in the system.

“The public version of the report was heavily redacted, and that was a big discovery for us, as we were accidentally given a copy of the company’s private report through a public records request,” Ermolaev said. “It just comes back to us believing they are misleading the public on the inefficiencies on knife detection, and some firearms.”

While Evolv does not dispute the report, they categorically deny all IPVM’s claims regarding transparency and any attempt to mislead the public or their clients.

“We’re completely transparent with our customers, that includes Nissan Stadium,” Ellenbogen said. “They have all the details and all the information.”

Ellenbogen admits the Evolv scanners are not perfect, but he told WSMV4 Investigates that the system has undergone extensive upgrades since the Ohio and New York school incidents and the 2021 field report.

“We’re continuously improving the software, the AI that’s running on these machines,” Ellenbogen said. “So today, this system is better and more advanced than it was when it was initially installed at Nissan Stadium.”

Guerra firmly believes that is true, saying the Titans’ Evolv system has been upgraded numerous times, and specific members of their security team are trained regularly on operating the system.

She also points to how well the system is working, saying that during the first 14 events hosted at Nissan Stadium in 2023, Evolv scanners found more than 200 knives and a small number of concealed guns.

But she says detecting weapons is only one of the system’s jobs, Evolv is also helping eliminate large crowds that used to gather outside the stadium before games and concerts, waiting to get through security.

“We were experiencing a huge crowding issue heading into the gates at Nissan Stadium,” Guerra said. “It really can’t be underscored enough how much that impacts security.”

Those crowds, she said, raise the risk of fights, they potentially block first responders during an emergency, security cannot easily tell if someone inside the crowd has a weapon, and those large groups also become targets.

However, Guerra says thanks to the speed and efficiency of the Evolv system, security lines at Nissan are largely a thing of the past, and the risks that come with those large groups are gone.

The result, she says, is that before the Titans put the Evolv system in place, the NFL and fan surveys placed Nissan Stadium near the bottom for security thoroughness, efficiency, and outside stadium safety.

“Now, we are actually one of the leaders in the NFL in all of those categories,” Guerra said. “So, it’s great to know that the efforts that we’re putting into security are reflected in those results, and Evolv is part of that layered approach.”

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