TASER® Blog

Yesterday, the Mesa Police Association (MPA) on its website expressed its support for TASER International’s two new innovative technologies — TASER® AXON™, an on-officer tactical computer and video-audio recorder that captures incidents from the officer’s perspective, and EVIDENCE.COM™ a world-class, Web 3.0 cloud computing service providing secure storage and groundbreaking analytic capability for digital information and evidence while preserving a pristine evidentiary chain of custody.  

Together, AXON and EVIDENCE.COM will protect truth through an end-to-end integrated solution to capture, store securely, and analyze digital evidence and information in ways that enables tactical and strategic decision making by law enforcement, as well as for legal evidentiary use.  

On its web page, the MPA wrote:

MPA has been an exclusive viewer of the new video product Taser is introducing called AXON. Members of MPA were able to see the functionality of the innovative product months ago and continue to spread the word to other NAPO members.  The benefits are endless, including:

• Protects officers from bogus complaints. 
• Is activated by officer, much in the way officers use voice recording now. 
• New tech culture has many people recording Officer involved incidents from many angles by use of video phones. Big cities having their incidents recorded by many people. Big city PDs state it is stupid of us to not record our own incidents, when people are recording us and who knows what kind of doctoring they are doing to the videos. 
• All the same reasons we use car cameras- better prosecution. Can be used for training and is portable on the officers. You see what the officers sees. 
• Cut down on paperwork. In testing in the UK, reports turned to bullet points stating see video, cutting down about 25% on report writing. 
• Is easy to use and officer never touches video using Taser’s technology and evidence.com 
• Half the price of car camera equipment. 
• Complaints in UK went down to almost zero when they knew they were videoed. 
• Public behaves when they know they are being videoed and officers act more professional. When they don’t behave, it’s on video. 
• Had one officer been wearing the camera in the Madrigal shooting, there would be no lawsuit. 

The Mesa Police Association’s posting of its support on Monday followed a lengthy Arizona Republic article on Sunday that reviewed the new integrated digital multi-media evidence collection, storage and management solution by TASER International.  

The article included an interview with Jim Mann, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police Arizona Labor Council, who said that he generally believes on-officer cameras are a bad idea. The Mesa Police Association interestingly points out that “another organization provides information contrary to our views and have not seen what this technology can do.”

It has been nearly a year since TASER International CEO, Rick Smith first publicly spoke about the concept of an on-officer tactical computer and an on-officer video/audio recording device. Over the past year, we’ve learned how to make this concept a reality by listening to the concerns of our customers and end users. What we also learned is that the difficult task of developing new technologies and systems solutions which will make the prosecution of criminals and the defending of law enforcement officers easier and more efficient is only half the battle. Gaining the trust and acceptance of the very officers for whom AXON and EVIDENCE.COM has been developed to protect is the other half.  

It is expected that some people will have dissenting opinions, even aversions to new technologies simply because they are new. On the other hand, it is extremely heartening to know that there are organizations like the Mesa Police Association which are willing to take the time to be educated, provide valuable feedback, and now embrace technology for what it is — new and innovative.