Baltimore Police will soon be flush with high-tech gadgetry as the Scott administration makes the big bet that virtual reality training, AI-powered drones, and improved body-worn cameras (BWCs) will make up for chronic staff shortages.

The Board of Estimates is set tomorrow to approve one of the most expensive law enforcement contracts in local history – a $153,217,966.56 master services deal with Axon Enterprise that’s more than three times larger than the existing Axon contract it will replace.

In return, the Scottsdale, AZ-based company will supply police with a blizzard of next-generation BWCs, tasers, VR headsets and much more through June 30, 2036.

The much more includes unlimited premium access to other proprietary services hatched by the company, including “Axon Investigate,” “Axon Interview,” “Axon Air,” “Axon Vision,” “My90” and “Axon Dedrone.” (The latter involving AI-powered cameras to track unwanted drones in the sky.)

These expenditures come at a time when Baltimore and most major cities are experiencing a historic decline in violent crime after a sharp spike during and after the Covid pandemic.

For fiscal 2027, the Scott administration has proposed a police budget of $656.6 million. That’s a 7% jump from the current budget and fully 29% above the FY19 police budget.

Since nearly $9 out of $10 for the police budget comes from general funds, city taxpayers will be paying for Axon equipment and software for a long time.

For the company, the new contract represents an important step in solidifying its role as the police department’s “brains.”

Writing Reports and Automation

One of the fastest growing AI companies, Axon’s revenues increased by 33.5% last year. It hopes to surpass $6 billion in revenue by 2028, up from $2.8 billion now.

For BPD, the hope is that Axon-integrated services will not only enhance the department’s credibility among citizens but handle many labor-intensive tasks now assigned to civilians and officers, including drafting crime reports, transcribing recordings and documents, translating languages and answering questions from the public.

The company’s work for Baltimore Police started off modestly in 2016 when it was awarded  a five-year, $11.6 million contract to supply BWCs in the wake of the uprising after the in-custody death of Freddie Gray and a pending federal consent decree mandate.

Four years later, in June 2020, the contract had grown to $35 million due to add-ons for storage and data management. The contract will expire this June with a total of $46 million expended.

A key reason why Axon was chosen to continue as BPD’s chief technology supplier for the next 10 years is that changing vendors would require “a complete hardware overhaul, resulting in significant transition costs for the city,” a procurement memo says.

According to Axon, the new contract will save the city at least $7 million a year through bundled services and increased productivity.

The most expensive services will involve “virtual” officer training ($48.2 million) and introducing Taser 10 technology to the force ($47.9 million).

The former will place officers in headsets for virtual reality training that – minus the human touch – “builds muscle memory without the need for extensive training time and live cartridge consumption,” the company says.

Taser 10 is advertised as a tool to “create more time and space to de-escalate and resolve conflicts” through an expanded range of deployment. If de-escalation fails it can, without reloading, fire up to 10 cartridges whose electrical charges incapacitate the target.

20,000 Live Cartridges

Upon signing the new contract, Axon says it will supply police with 20,000 live taser cartridges and 10,000 “halt” (non-conductive) practice cartridges. Between 2027 and 2030, another 32,000 halt cartridges will be delivered.

BPD operations will be modernized through “Axon Interview,” a cloud-based system that streamlines the interview process and uploads to Axon Evidence for date analysis and storage, “Axon Air,” which will deploy drones for “actionable insights before ground units arrive,” and “Axon Body 3,” a body-worn camera with breakthrough optics that “captures truth, increasing community transparency so we can drive change together.” (Axon also supplies the BWCs used by Baltimore County Police.)

The 2017 Consent Decree between Baltimore and the Department of Justice requires the disclosure of new equipment or technology for enforcement activities or the oversight of such activities.

BPD has hired a number of small companies to handle specialized services, such as Computer Analytics, which established a database of officers who might require intervention, and Computer Square Inc., which was awarded a $98,000 contract increase by the Board of Estimates in April for its jail calls tracker and executive protection threat assessment module.

Before the board tomorrow is a $3.6 million contract with Chicago-based Kentech Consulting to provide background investigations and criminal record checks for the Police Department for the next three years.

Mayor Brandon Scott’s recently released 10-year plan, Securing Baltimore’s Future, envisions modernizing police operations through data-driven technology along with expanding his Group Violence Reduction Strategy and – a perennial dream among mayors that never seems to happen – restoring old-fashioned, community-based foot patrols.