Overland Park committee approves 10-year, $22.4 million Axon agreement for connected policing technology

The Overland Park Public Safety Committee on Sept. 10 recommended that the City Council approve a sole-source purchase and agreement with Axon Technologies Inc. to adopt the vendor’s connected public-safety ecosystem over a 10-year term for an amount not to exceed $22,366,743.84.

The agreement covers Axon body-worn cameras and in-car systems, a digital evidence management system (evidence.com), records management migration, drone-for-first-responder capability, AI-enabled review tools and a package of services and hardware refreshes that staff said will be delivered across the term. Major Richard Brashears, who led the presentation for the police department, told the committee the system would connect body cameras, in-car video, drones and other devices into a single platform so evidence and records do not need to be pulled from multiple siloed systems.

“This allows you to open up the app, take a photo, and it drops it directly into the record system,” Major Richard Brashears said of Axon’s digital evidence features. He described an integrated workflow in which a body camera’s LTE connection can provide location and live-streaming, trigger recording when a weapon is drawn and launch a drone to an officer’s…