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Orting police recommend renewal of Axon contract; council asks for competitive check and possible feature reductions
Summary
The police chief recommended renewing a 10-year Axon services contract (body cameras, tasers, cloud storage) that would increase annual costs; council asked staff to seek competitive checks and consider removing optional AI features to reduce fees.
The police chief requested council authorization to renew the Axon term contract that provides body-worn cameras, Tasers, cloud evidence storage and associated software. The existing annual cost (roughly $30,000) would increase under the recommended 10-year package to about $90,000 per year under the features staff selected, primarily due to added cloud services and optional AI tools intended to reduce redaction and report-writing time.
Council members acknowledged the operational benefits — equipment replacement and included support over the contract term — but questioned the scale of the price increase and asked whether less expensive packages or competing vendors had been considered. "If we want to save money, we could eliminate the AI redaction feature and have staff continue manual redaction," Council member Moore said, while noting a colleague reached out to an alternative vendor (Motorola) for a possible product comparison.
The chief said he pared the initial quote to retain only required services and some warranted items; he recommended forwarding the renewal to the Oct. 29 regular meeting as a consent item but council asked staff to obtain a vendor comparison before final consent. Council encouraged staff to be prepared to pull the item from consent if a materially less expensive and equivalent alternative is identified.
