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.

Comments

the first hit is always free

[Thud457]

and then pay yearly subscription fees for storage & analysis to the end of time.

Re:the first hit is always free

[networkBoy]

That's fine with me.
The more cops wearing body cameras that stream to the cloud for storage (ending the missing SD card issue) the better!

There are tons of reports where adding body cameras has decreased both actual and claimed police abuses.

Re:the first hit is always free

[Anonymous Coward]

The more cops wearing body cameras that stream to the cloud for storage (ending the missing SD card issue) the better!

Is that what these cameras do?

Trick question. No, it isn't, unless this is a new generation of them.

After our police chief got recruited by Taser and mysteriously secured a no-bid contract, Albuquerque started using Taser's product. It used SD cards, and as our police records custodian noticed, the videos didn't always manage to later get uploaded. Some darker things were alleged as well though it's not clear if they really happened.

DoJ is looking into it. Or they were, before the president came out against police oversight. #ThanksTrump

Anyway, the only reason I bring this up, is that at least with the machines APD has, the videos definitely are not streamed directly to the servers without the cops having veto (or editing) powers. Whether they use those powers, is a matter of how much you trust them.

Hahaha!

[93 Escort Wagon]

"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!

uhm, what?

[superwiz]

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.