Baltimore Police officials pitched their new $150 million no-bid contract for Tasers, body cameras and related software as if it were a no-brainer.
They told the city’s spending board that Axon Enterprises already provides those products to the Police Department. They said the Arizona-based company owns the market for such services.
They warned that changing providers would be exceedingly complicated and costly. And that doing so could jeopardize the agency’s technological compliance with its federal consent decree.
What they didn’t explain, however, is the secret sauce inside the controversial $153 million, 10-year contract that helps to nearly triple the annual cost of products and services.
The credit — or blame, depending on your perspective — goes to artificial intelligence.
Baltimore’s spending board approved the expenditure in a rare contested vote Wednesday, with the only members who don’t work for Mayor Brandon Scott expressing serious concerns that the city didn’t seek competition for the services Axon provides.
“I don’t buy the explanation that we have too much already invested with this vendor so we should not seek out other competitors. I don’t think that’s how this works,” Council President Zeke Cohen, who voted against the measure, said in a Friday interview.
“I think it would’ve been advantageous for the city to go through the bidding process and see what Motorola and other companies had to offer,” Cohen added, referring to Motorola Solutions, which said at the spending board meeting it could save the city $50 million.
When The Banner approached police officials after the Board of Estimates meeting, they directed a reporter’s questions to the department’s media relations division. More than a day later, spokespeople confirmed details of the last contract, showing that costs could now triple under the new contract.
In 2025, the Axon contract cost the BPD $5.9 million, the agency said. The new contract amounts to $10 million annually for the first two years, an increase the BPD attributed to inflation.
During that period, the BPD will have free use of Axon’s “suite of AI services.” The system’s AI functions will aid police “in translation, transcription, summarization, and searching” footage from the body cameras, department spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said.
If police choose to keep using the AI services, the cost of the contract will increase further to about $16 million annually, Eldridge explained.
During the two-year test run, police will work with other city agencies to implement guardrails on AI usage, Eldridge said. The technology would be piloted before being implemented agency-wide, she added.
The contract says, “Axon AI Technology is intended to improve public safety, streamline operations, and ensure data accuracy.”
Cohen told The Banner he was briefed by Axon ahead of Wednesday’s vote, and the company said the increased cost was a result of providing a fully integrated system including Tasers, body cameras and “report-drafting AI.”
It’s unclear how much time AI will save detectives or prosecutors, who often review hours of body camera footage related to investigations. The new contract says the BPD must “review AI-generated outputs to ensure accuracy and appropriateness.”
Baltimore debuted its police body camera program with Axon as the vendor in 2016 at an initial cost of $11.7 million for six years. An additional $8.6 million was approved in 2018 to extend the program until 2023. In June 2020, another $13.2 million was added to the contract.
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