Worcester Police Eye 'Cadillac' Of Body Cameras Made By Axon

WORCESTER, MA — Worcester City Councilor George Russell heard it on the street: The police body cameras that the police department may buy — made by a Seattle-based company called Axon — are considered the "Cadillac" of bodycams.

During a City Council meeting Monday, he quizzed Worcester police Chief Steven Sargent on that point, and whether Worcester would consider other, perhaps less expensive options.

"It probably is the highest level, that's what we would want," Sargent said. "I don't want to go cheap."

Worcester police ran a bodycam pilot program in 2019 using Axon equipment. The company donated the cameras, which were returned at the end of the pilot, according to Lt. Sean Murtha. On July 21, Sargent delivered a report on the bodycam pilot, including three proposals outlining the cost of a full bodycam program.

READ: Worcester Police Withhold Many Use-Of-Force Body Camera Videos

For the equipment alone, the cheapest package would cost $4.4 million over five years. The most expensive would be $5.7 million, and would include 453 units of Axon's latest camera model — the Axon 3 — plus 453 Taser 7 weapons and the company's "OSP7+" plan.

Axon started in the early 1990s selling the less-lethal Taser weapon. But in 2017, the company rebranded to become Axon, shifting from just Tasers to bodycams and its Evidence.com cloud storage product. In doing so, it has become the gold standard in bodycam technology.

In many ways, Axon is to police what Microsoft is to office workers. The company wants departments to become part of the "Axon ecosystem," which means police use Axon Tasers, Axon bodycams, and Evidence.com — just like Microsoft wants you to use its Office software for everything from spreadsheets to surfing the web.

Here's the company's marketing video for the OSP7+ package:

Axon, whose headquarters in Seattle is just a few blocks from Amazon's headquarters, made a splash in 2017 when it announced it would give free, one-year bodycam trials to police departments. That announcement came when the company changed its name from Taser to Axon.

"We believe these cameras are more than just tools to protect communities and the officers who serve them," Axon CEO Rick Smith said in 2017. "They also hold the potential to change police work as we know it, by seamlessly collecting an impartial record and reducing the need for endless paperwork. That's why we're giving this opportunity to every single police officer in America."

Axon earned about $531 million in revenue in 2019, up 26 percent from the previous year, according to an earnings statement. The company made a lot of money selling the products that Worcester may buy. In 2019, Axon sold the OSP7 plan to about 100 agencies, and 70 percent opted for the "top tier" OSP7+ plan, according to the company.

Axon's stock rose to a five-year high of about $100 per share in the weeks following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the demand for a change in policing. There was a similar cry following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Missouri. In a July statement calling for a full bodycam program in Worcester, District 1 Councilor Sean Rose said the devices would help provide "transparency, safety and accountability."

The cost of Worcester's bodycam program could top $11 million, according to Sargent. On top of the equipment, Sargent projects that the department will have to spend over $800,000 per year on personnel costs to manage the bodycam program. Sargent also wants to purchase cell phones for every officer to access Axon software. Worcester already owns about 150 Taser weapons. But Axon will give the department a discount on the bodycam package if it buys new Tasers.

Ultimately, the bodycam program will have to go out for a competitive bid, but department leaders have shown a preference for Axon.

"Axon has the gold standard," Sargent told councilors during Monday's hearing.