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Council waives formal bidding, approves Axon suite for police body‑cams, cloud evidence and records management
Summary
The council approved an agreement with Axon for an integrated suite — including body‑worn cameras, in‑car systems, interview room upgrades, cloud evidence storage and a custom records management build — under a 10‑year plan after staff described operational and training benefits and data‑sharing expectations with partner agencies.
The Town Council on Oct. 6 voted to waive formal bidding and authorized an agreement with Axon to provide a suite of public‑safety technology products and services for the Normal Police Department, including body‑worn cameras, in‑car systems, interview‑room upgrades, cloud‑based evidence management and a custom records management system.
City staff said the proposal consolidates multiple product lines under one vendor to enable operational efficiencies, automated evidence ingestion, unlimited cloud storage and regular equipment refreshes over the contract term. Chief Petrilli told council the police department has reached roughly 100 terabytes of on‑premises storage and that video is the fastest‑growing data type; the Axon cloud option was presented as a way to scale without requiring larger local hardware investments.
Innovation and technology director Vasu Gharaju described the records management benefits — redaction, NIBRS reporting and CJIS compliance — and said the records management component would be custom built over 18–24 months. Council members asked about migration of data from the Caliber records system; staff said only a portion of Caliber records would be migrated and that legacy Caliber records would be maintained by the county because many are county records.
Council members also asked about potential cost offsets from eliminating duplicate systems (for example, separate redaction software) and about AI features in Axon’s Draft1 transcription tool; staff said Axon’s Draft1 transcribes audio, produces suggested text for officer reports and includes guardrails that require officers to review and confirm bracketed or AI‑generated text before submission. The council approved the resolution by roll call.
