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Taser Offers Free Body Cameras To All US Police (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Taser, the company whose electronic stun guns have become a household name, is now offering a groundbreaking deal to all American law enforcement: free body cameras and a year's worth of access to the company's cloud storage service, Evidence.com. In addition, on Wednesday, the company also announced that it would be changing its name to "Axon" to reflect the company's flagship body camera product. Right now, Axon is the single largest vendor of body cameras in America. It vastly outsells smaller competitors, including VieVu and Digital Ally -- the company has profited $90 million from 2012 through 2016. If the move is successful, Axon could quickly crowd out its rivals entirely. In recent years, federal dollars went to police agencies both big (Los Angeles) and small (Village of Spring Valley, New York), encouraging the purchase of body-worn cameras. However, while cameras are rapidly spreading across America, they are still not ubiquitous yet. Axon wants to change that. "Only 20 percent [of cops] have a camera," Rick Smith, the company's CEO, told Ars. "Eighty percent are going out with a gun and no camera. We only need 20- to 30-percent conversion to make it profitable," he added. "We expect 80 percent to become customers." "Our belief is that a body camera is to a cop what a smartphone is to a civilian," Smith said. "Cops spend about two-thirds of their time doing paperwork. We believe, within 10 years, we can automate police reporting. We can effectively triple the world's police force." The offer is only available to American law enforcement, but Smith said the company would consider foreign agencies on a case-by-case basis.
A year's worth of access means the local municipalities are on the hook to figure out how to fund all the remaining years. It's rope-a-dope charity.
and then pay yearly subscription fees for storage & analysis to the end of time.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Cops spend about two-thirds of their time doing paperwork. We believe, within 10 years, we can automate police reporting. We can effectively triple the world's police force."
Yeah, like the middle managers in any enterprise are going to let manually-done paperwork go away...
Although in this case, I have my doubts that police reporting can really be automated away in our lifetimes. I can see automation eventually handling the "who, what, when, where" part, and probably the "how" - but the "why" is going to be a harder nut to crack, and that's the most important part.
It's like when I was a kid, way back in the stone ages. This was before personal computers; but business use of computers (at least for larger businesses) was beginning to gain traction. Companies like Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific were publicly stating how they thought their paper businesses were going to collapse in 20 years... HA!
#DeleteChrome
How much after the first year, Axon? It's a good strategy...offer the cameras for free, then making departments dependent on Evidence.com for cloud storage. (Because what business would give away cameras for free that could work with alternative cloud services, or local department servers?)
That makes as much sense as departments agreeing with GM to get free Impala cruisers up front, but also agreeing to buy all gasoline from Chevy at $10 / gallon.
Sure, give away the cameras for free. The real value is in locking them into the Axon data storage infrastructure. Once police departments get used to storing data in Axon's cloud, it's going to be too much trouble to try and change the system.
They want all police to store their body cameras data on their services and it's free for a year? I am not sure they could pay enough for all the police to store all their footage on their servers forever. This kind of footage should be stored in police evidence lockers under lock and key. They want become the universal street surveyor without paying for it and they want the people working for them for free to pay them (at some point) to work for them for free? Wow. Just wow. The value of that data is more than the value of all the satellite imagery combined. Oh and spare us the soliloquy about compartmentalization. If they have access to the data, it will be datamined.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It doesn't seem that long ago when police having a camera on their person was something out of science fiction. We've see police with cameras for a long time now but they've been limited to cameras on cars, buildings, or on a person only in cases of an undercover police going after high value targets. I'm amazed at the speed in which they are being adopted.
I can see why police are wanting them, it keeps everyone honest. Before such audio and video recording devices were common we'd have to rely on witness testimony, which has been proven to be terrible at keeping things straight. Cameras have shown many accusations of police abuse to be false, as well as caught abuses that may have gone unseen before.
What is disturbing is how there is evidence that cameras have tended to encourage police shootings. Before cameras there was always doubt in a police officer's mind of having a use of force shown justifiable after the fact. Now with cameras much of this doubt is removed. I'm a bit torn on this. On the one hand we see people that assault police get shot, when they likely deserve it. On the other hand we see police get "lazy" and shoot at the first sign they might be in danger, when a less lethal means might have been effective.
As with all things this comes with its ups and downs.
Another thing, there's this quote, "Eighty percent are going out with a gun and no camera. " I saw a video yesterday of three female officers getting beat up by a single enraged man. He was picking up rocks and tossing them at the officers and their car, with enough force to crack the windshield. The officers would try to tackle the guy but he'd throw them off and swing his fists at them. Why didn't they shoot the guy? Because in the country they were in the officers are not armed with guns. They get batons, pepper spray, and handcuffs. Did he deserve to get shot? Probably not. I do think though that if he knew the officers had the ability to use lethal force that he'd sober up real quick and either submit to arrest or be free to go on his way.
To anyone that thinks that swinging a fist is insufficient reason to shoot someone then I have a problem with that. A 200 pound man throwing a punch at a 150 pound woman is lethal force in my mind.
They got this one maniac on camera beating up three female police officers, but none of the officers were effectively armed. Cameras are nice, guns are better, having both is great.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It's not charity, just business. Understand what you buy when you buy it and what's behind the scenes.
For example, there is a line in the summary that says, "In addition, on Wednesday, the company also announced that it would be changing its name to "Axon" to reflect the company's flagship body camera product[,]" In reality, they're a business and are concerned about their brand, and (1) tasers have high brand risk because of viral videos and (2) the term "taser" has arguably become a generic term for stun gun, so it may be that they will lose a trademark fight in court over their major brand if anyone challenges them.
There's nothing wrong with them doing that--it makes good business sense--but it would be a bit naive to take the company's statement at face value without understanding its implications.
Real lawyers write in C++