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Council approves five‑year Axon agreement for body cameras, Taser 10 rollout and drone detection; chief outlines transparency and safeguards
Summary
Ann Arbor approved a five-year master services contract with Axon covering body and in‑car cameras, redaction tools, Taser 10 capability and a drone‑detection system; Police Chief Brian described equity analyses, public dashboards and restrictions on automatic license‑plate scanning.
The City Council approved CA14, a master services and purchasing agreement with Axon Enterprise, Inc., that will update the Ann Arbor Police Department’s technology stack, including body‑worn and in‑car cameras, redaction/analytics tools, Taser 10 deployment and a drone‑detection system.
Police Chief Brian walked the council through the agreement, describing operational goals and safeguards. On equity and public reporting, he said the department conducts an annual use‑of‑force analysis that includes demographic and location data and that staff are building a public dashboard to display trends. "We are actively working to build a public facing dashboard," the chief said, describing plans to include use‑of‑force and deployment analytics.
Chief Brian also told council the department declined to enable automatic license‑plate scanning and would formalize written policy restrictions to ensure the Axon fleet and tools conform to the city’s Driving Equity ordinance. On redaction and AI, he said Axon’s redaction tool will be used with a required human review step and that independent audit options are available.
Council members asked about Taser 10 capabilities, the expansion of effective range, training with virtual reality and how contingency spending might relate to future hiring. The chief said the Taser 10 increases effective range and that the contract contingency (roughly ten percent of contract value) accommodates potential staffing or feature additions over the five‑year term.
Council approved CA14 following the chief’s presentation. The approval authorizes implementation and requires staff to return with any policy language or reporting details as needed to meet council’s transparency requests.
Next steps: The police department will proceed with procurement and policy work, including public-facing data dashboards and formalized vendor audit/quality controls as the tools are deployed.
