To: MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL
From: JOE HOFFMAN, CHIEF OF POLICE
TITLE
title
APPROVE THE PURCHASE OF 114 BODY-WORN CAMERAS, LICENSES, ACCESSORIES, AND EXTENDED WARRANTIES FROM AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. UTILIZING A COOPERATIVE PURCHASE AGREEMENT WITH SOURCEWELL, FOR A FIVE-YEAR TERM BEGINNING OCTOBER 15, 2025 THROUGH OCTOBER 15, 2030, IN AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $789,722
end
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Police Department seeks approval to purchase 114 body-worn cameras (BWC), accessories, and extended warranties to replace equipment that is no longer supported utilizing the City’s existing Master Services Agreement (MSA) with Axon Enterprise, Inc. (Axon). Axon body camera equipment is the industry standard and is fully integrated with their digital evidence management platform and less-than-lethal TASER conducted energy devices (CEDs). Pricing and terms for the proposed purchase are available through a Sourcewell, sole source cooperative agreement. If approved, the additional BWCs will increase inventory from 88 to 114 enabling the Police Department to assign body-worn cameras to all Department personnel who routinely interact with the public, increasing public and employee safety while providing improved risk and liability management for the City.
BACKGROUND
The Police Department first implemented a BWC program in 2014 through a pilot program that deployed six devices. By 2017, the Police Department had achieved full officer deployment, with each sworn staff member being issued an individual BWC. In April 2020, the City entered into a five-year agreement with Axon that included 88 Axon BWCs and licenses to access Evidence.com, Axon’s cloud-based digital evidence management platform.
Over the five-year term, the BWC program proved to be an essential component of daily Police operations. During that time, Police personnel recorded and uploaded over 263,000 individual videos to Evidence.com, totaling more than 34,000 hours of footage consuming nearly 59 terabytes of secure cloud storage. Currently, there are over 200,000 videos, images, and audio recordings active in the database in compliance with evidentiary and legal requirements. On an average day, officers upload approximately 144 videos to the system, contributing over 18 hours and 32 gigabytes of new data. Since the launch of the 2014 pilot program, Police personnel have recorded and uploaded more than 407,000 videos to the Evidence.com database.
The Police Department learned a great deal through the initial five-year term of the Agreement and developed an understanding of program successes as well as the opportunities that existed to improve the system. The original Agreement included only three Pro-level licenses, which proved insufficient for operational needs as supervisors, detectives, and City Attorney personnel all increasingly relied on timely access to BWC footage for investigative and prosecutorial purposes. In response to both an internal assessment and an audit conducted by Axon in 2022, the Department recommended and received approval to amend the contract and purchase an additional 37 Pro-level licenses.
The 2020-2025 term also highlighted the increasing value of digital tools beyond traditional officer-worn devices. Specifically, the Police Department increased utilization of Axon's “Community Request” feature, which allows members of the public to submit cellphone videos, CCTV footage, and other digital evidence directly to investigators and other personnel with Pro-level licenses through secure public portals and SMS links delivered to citizens via Department-issued cell phones. In the last 12 months, more than 1,000 videos and digital images have been shared by victims and witnesses via this feature.
The direct digital evidence software maintains a secure chain-of-custody from creation to upload into the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)-complaint Evidence.com system. This has reduced delays and eliminated barriers that would otherwise hinder investigative follow-up, suspect identification, and crime prevention. The updated proposal will allow for an expansion of this feature to allow all Police personnel that are assigned an Evidence.com licenses to generate secure links, instead of limiting this feature to supervisors and investigative personnel.
In June 2025, the City Council approved a MSA with Axon for the purchase of tasers, that can be utilized to establish the legal and operational framework for the proposed purchase of BWCs. The MSA incorporates detailed provisions governing data security, user privacy, system availability, and the proper retention and access of digital evidence.
Axon’s Evidence.com platform is hosted within the Microsoft Azure Government cloud environment, which meets the stringent requirements of the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy. This includes multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, role-based access controls, and non-editable audit logs that record every user action within the system. These safeguards ensure that digital evidence remains tamper-resistant with fully transparent, traceable, and consistent access that meets the highest federal security standards.
Beyond Axon’s system-level protections, the Police Department has adopted internal policies that govern the use, access, retention, and public release of BWC footage in compliance with California Penal Code § 832.18, which requires agencies to establish written procedures covering BWC use, data security, access control, and minimum retention periods.
The Department’s Portable Audio/Video Recorder Policy reinforces this framework by requiring members to document recordings, prohibit unauthorized use or dissemination of recordings, and mandates supervisor review and oversight of the program. Access to stored recordings is logged, monitored, and restricted to authorized personnel with a legitimate basis to view recordings. Department policy also prohibits the use of biometric surveillance features, including facial recognition, in connection with BWC footage, further protecting privacy and due process rights of community members. Together, Axon’s CJIS-compliant infrastructure and the Department’s legally mandated policies ensure the secure and accountable management of all digital evidence.
Currently, all 88 of the Police Department’s BWCs and related dock equipment from the 2020 agreement are several years old, with warranties that expired in November 2023. The 2020 Agreement expired in April 2025 and continued access to Evidence.com is being facilitated by gap coverage. Long-term uninterrupted service, cloud storage, hardware support, and use of expanded features require the City to enter into a new agreement.
Since the approval of the existing Axon Agreement, the Police Department has continuously monitored the body-worn camera marketplace to evaluate available technologies and determine whether an alternative vendor could meet the evolving operational needs of the Department. This review process included vendor presentations, performance demonstrations, input from peer agencies, monitoring public sentiment, and tracking the evolving legal environment surrounding BWC usage. While multiple vendors presented competing products, the Police Department concluded that Axon remains the best option based on features, platform maturity, and reliability. Axon has captured a very large market share, and several peer agencies who use/used competing platforms indicated that they would be transitioning to, or back to, Axon. Reliability and the negative impact on staff time required to manage less reliable systems were common themes guiding these agencies back to Axon.
In addition, multiple barriers were identified while assessing how competing platforms would serve the City. The first is the sheer volume of data and the ability to access this data after transitioning to a competing platform. While emerging technology like Peregrine, Inc. may eventually facilitate immediate access large volumes of digital video and still image data, it is currently not a practical consideration. Competing vendor proposals utilize manual requests via email and telephone calls, or by using third-party applications to access the 59 terabytes of legacy data currently stored in the Evidence.com system. This would add a layer of inefficiency that would hinder the Police Department’s current operational model. None of the vendors surveyed offered seamless integration for videos and images already stored in Evidence.com.
Another issue was integration and transfer of evidence with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office (LADA) for case filings. Evidence.com is the LADA’s contracted digital evidence management system. Agencies who do not use Axon’s system can still submit digital evidence to the LADA through a third-party portal. This extra step would expand the timeline and could potentially reduce reliability of evidence submitted to the LADA.
Lastly, as the public safety technology space has evolved, alliances and cooperation among the various vendors have changed along with it. While the circumstances may change in the future, at least one competing vendor was not willing to offer integration with existing Peregrine data aggregation infrastructure due to an alliance with a competing platform. This would reduce the effectiveness of the existing tools the Police Department uses to consolidate information from various sources, making it harder to gather intelligence quickly, which hinders the Department’s ability to fight and prevent crime.
Axon's product ecosystem is fully integrated with the TASER 7 CEDs utilized by Police Department personnel, with data produced by both the TASER 7 and Axon Body 4 BWCs feed directly into the shared Evidence.com environment. This seamless integration enables synchronized data logging, cartridge tracking, video tagging, and policy-based workflows that reduce administrative burdens and enhance investigative efficiency. Beyond technical capability, Axon's alignment with the Police Department’s established training programs, internal policies, and digital infrastructure will provide a high degree of continuity and reliability for the Department.
The purchase of 114 body-worn cameras, increased from 88, will provide sufficient inventory to equip all members of the Police Department who regularly interact with the public, including sworn personnel, jail staff, municipal services officers, code enforcement, and cadets. This expansion ensures all public-facing employees have the protection and accountability benefits of body-worn cameras, reducing the likelihood of disputes over department member conduct and providing critical evidence in the event of litigation. This agreement also strengthens the City’s legal position by demonstrating a proactive approach to risk management and adherence to best practices in transparency and documentation.
In addition to hardware, the proposal includes a la carte software modules that expand functionality for these users. Notably, the proposed Agreement includes the Axon Community Request tool enabling secure, direct submission of external video evidence and the Axon Performance module, which allows supervisors to audit usage and measure compliance with Department policy. Axon Performance supports both targeted and random audits, enabling supervisors to proactively monitor camera activation practices and ensure alignment with Police Department expectations.
These features, along with the cumulative experience with Axon products over more than a decade of use, underscore the value of Axon’s digital evidence system: to the public, who expect transparency and accountability; to police personnel, who require reliable technology in the field; and to justice system associates, such as prosecutors, who depend on timely access to secure digital evidence. For these reasons, the Department recommends Council approve the proposed sole source purchase agreement with Axon.
The BWCs will be purchased utilizing Axon’s cooperative purchasing agreement with Sourcewell. Cooperative purchasing provides the City with competitive pricing and terms without expending staff resources to prepare and conduct a competitive procurement process. The use of cooperative purchasing agreements complies with the City’s established purchasing policies.
COORDINATION
The Police Department coordinated this purchase with Information Technology and Financial Services Departments, along with the City Attorney’s Office.
FISCAL IMPACT
The proposed Purchase Agreement is for a five-year term, with a total cost of $789,722. The cost for the first year is $189,110, and then $150,153 annually for the remaining four years. Ongoing funding for the body-worn cameras is included in the Information Technology annual operating budget through the Internal Service Fund. The initial one-time funding for the cameras, as well as the ongoing increased cost of the new purchase, was approved in Decision Package #20 as part of the FY 2025-26 Budget. No additional budget appropriation is required.
APPROVED BY:
Mike Witzansky, City Manager
ATTACHMENTS
• Agmt and MSA - Axon Enterprise, Inc., Sourcewell Contract #101223-AXN and Master Services and Purchasing Agreement for Customer
• Insurance - Axon Enterprise, Inc.