Baltimore to spend $153M on no-bid deal for police Tasers, AI body cameras

Baltimore will spend $153 million to replace the city Police Department’s fleet of Tasers and to add a new complement of body-worn cameras with artificial intelligence capabilities.

The city’s spending board on Wednesday approved a no-bid, 10-year contract with Axon Enterprises, a company that outfits law enforcement agencies with various technologies, to continue supplying the Baltimore Police Department with body cameras, stun guns and data management software.

In a 3-1 vote approving the contract, Council President Zeke Cohen voted against the agreement while Comptroller Bill Henry abstained, both citing concerns about the way the deal was bid.

Baltimore Police already uses Axon Tasers and body cameras, police spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said in an email ahead of Wednesday’s Board of Estimates meeting.

While the Tasers are simply updated replacements for those that have worn out, the body cameras have new capabilities, she said. These cameras have an AI function that can “assist officers, detectives, supervisors and reviewers in translation, transcription, summarization, and searching” footage.

Eldridge explained the contract includes a two-year provision for Baltimore Police to test the AI function and then determine whether it wants to purchase those capabilities.

During the test run, the city and the Police Department will develop guardrails for AI use and standard operating procedures, Eldridge said. “All new technologies will be fully tested and piloted before agency-wide deployment is ever considered.”

Henry and Cohen, the two members of the five-person Board of Estimates who don’t work for the mayor, expressed concerns Wednesday about the lack of competition for the Axon contract.

“We owe it to ourselves and the residents that live here and pay taxes to engage in competitive bidding processes,” Cohen said.

Police officials countered that their existing use of Axon infrastructure would mean that switching to another company would lead to additional costs, including the time it would take to train the agency’s thousands of officers on new technology. They also said it was unlikely that another company alone could provide all the services Axon does.

“Axon is the recognized industry technological and market leader for law enforcement officer safety products,” Eldridge said in an email, noting that Axon Tasers have a more than 90% share of the stun gun market and that more than 80% of major city police departments in America use Axon body cameras.

A representative for Motorola Solutions, which also makes body cameras, urged the spending board to delay its vote on the Axon contract because it could provide some of the services at a significantly lower cost. Mitchell Nowak of Motorola estimated the city could save up to $50 million by looking elsewhere for some of the services Axon provides.

Nowak described the no-bid contract as the city’s “failure to conduct essential due diligence.”

Derek Canton, Baltimore Police’s chief technology officer, said going with the Axon contract would “future proof BPD’s investment because we get no-cost upgrades.”

Eldridge said Axon has spent the last four years specially designing the department’s record management system. She said that system allows a patrol officer to easily enter information from the field, such as the names of suspects and witnesses, which is then automatically relayed to the investigator.

Henry said he was “very uncomfortable with the fact that we’re not going back to market.”

Added Cohen: “It may well be the best contract, but it may not.”

This story may be updated.