With no members of the public offering any comment on the item, the Los Gatos Town Council agreed to a $800,000 deal for body-worn cameras, tasers and digital evidence management with Axon Enterprises, Inc. over a five-year period for the police department.
The item sailed through unanimously as part of the Dec. 19 consent calendar, a collection of items Town officials deem uncontroversial or routine that can all be approved at once.
The item included a $68,356 budget adjustment from the General Fund Capital/Special Projects Reserve.
“The Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department was a pioneer in Santa Clara County by deploying Officers with Body-Worn Cameras (BWC) beginning in 2008,” Support Services Capt. Clint Tada wrote in a report. “The Department was an early adopter in the integration and use of Axon Enterprises Inc. Tasers as a less lethal de-escalation of force option.”
In February 2020, the Council approved $377,130 in funding for two five-year agreements with Axon for the purchase and maintenance of body-worn cameras, use of the Evidence.com digital cloud storage platform, and conducted energy weapons—better known as Tasers—to last through the end of fiscal 2023-24, Tada said.
“With the evolution and expansion of technology, demands for increased transparency, and legislative mandates, the Police Department incurred additional costs during this agreement term,” he told Council in a Dec. 14 report. “These added costs included the purchase and maintenance of additional body-worn cameras for civilian field personnel and the need to increase digital evidence storage capacity due to the increase in digital evidence collected and requested for the prosecution of cases.”
Plus, new State laws (AB 748, SB 1421, SB 2, SB 16) have meant extra costs for LGMSPD, according to Tada.
Between 2021 and 2023, the department bought another three body cams from Axon.
It also signed up for six terabytes of digital storage on the Axon Digital Evidence System.
That brought the total up to $398,405.
As Axon upgraded its “Officer Safety Plan” platform to OSP 10, local police were faced with a major price hike.
“Axon Enterprises Inc. has changed their pricing structures and plans to incorporate additional options to bundle specific Axon products, features, and platforms,” Tada said. “Beginning in January 2024, Axon has indicated to existing customers that all currently offered OSP 10 pricing plans will increase in excess of 16% immediately, and thereafter incur additional inflation increases.”
The department themselves called this a “significant” jump, though it admits it will get additional capabilities and licenses for the extra price.
“Body-Worn Cameras have proven to improve law enforcement legitimacy by enhancing transparency and aiding in the investigation and resolution of community complaints, as well as providing better evidence for criminal prosecutions, and reduced time for Officers in criminal court,” Tada said. “From 2020 to 2023, the Police Department has uploaded and maintained over 81,000 digital files to Axon’s secure, cloud-based digital evidence management system for evidentiary purposes.”
This meant Los Gatos police were able to place videos and other evidence “in the cloud” for 1,400 criminal cases, which were then submitted electronically to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. More than 125,000 “community contacts” were recorded and 13 terabytes of data is being stored.
“Switching providers would cause the District Attorney and the Police Department to incur significant increased costs as well as lost productivity to replicate processes utilizing a different vendor’s technology and resources,” Tada said. “A change of this nature would also negatively impact the ability for video management and evidence discovery for criminal justice proceedings.”
According to LGMSPD, Los Gatos doesn’t have much of a choice other than to pay for the increased costs.
“Staff recommends approving a sole-source purchase agreement because the materials manufactured and distributed by Axon are unique and specialized, and there is no other source for this equipment with the integrated platforms and technology capability already in use by the Department,” Tada said. “There are no other vendors capable of meeting the requirements of this service.”
A law introduced in 2019 changed procedures across the State, requiring police to release video and audio recordings of incidents where officers shot at someone or used force that resulted in death or serious injuries.
So, staff reworked the fine print of the agreement with Axon to state that any lawsuits will be dealt with in the County of Santa Clara, and to remove a requirement that the Town notify Axon when a Public Records Act request arrives. The total cost of the proposed Axon OSP 10+ agreement is now $780,612.55, which works out to about $156,000 annually.
No member of Council commented on the item before approving it.
