Riverside County supervisors this week approved a five-year, $18.2 million contract extension with Axon Enterprise, Inc. to provide body cameras and related services to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office (RSO).
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“These cameras are the modern way,” Undersheriff Don Sharp said at the September 1 meeting. “The body-worn cameras, I do believe for most citizens, provide confidence for what we do and accountability.”
The agreement, which was on the board’s consent agenda, was pulled by Supervisor Jose Medina, who has been critical of Sheriff Chad Bianco and has pushed for increased oversight of the department.
In addition to requesting a presentation on the agreement, Medina also had questions about the cost, the number of cameras, the department’s use of body-worn cameras and the general sentiment from deputies and the public about body-worn cameras.
Sharp said the department has had body-worn cameras for about 15 years, but has only been effectively using them for the past eight years. He also said using the body cameras has increased transparency, supported prosecution and aided in the defense of deputies.
“Being able to go back and look at , holding people accountable for their actions, this has helped the department in doing so,” he said. “It has also shown that our deputies have done a great job, and we’ve been able to view that and take certain complaints and show that they were false.”
As part of the contract extension, RSO will receive 2,086 updated body cameras with all of the current software services including unlimited storage, livestream capabilities and auto-tagging along with a number of increased functionality services including AI-assisted report writing, transcription and translation services.
The contract also includes the development and deployment of a real-time crime center through Axon Fusus, which will enable the department to integrate and access live video feeds and digital evidence from surrounding public safety agencies that choose to share that information.
The platform also includes additional software to support tasks including incident reporting, booking information, warrants and case management as well as indexing for people, vehicles, offenses and arrests in an effort to streamline the department’s search and investigative capabilities.
“The greatest benefits that we will gain from this is actually the increased technology for these body-worn cameras,” Sharp said. “That’s why we’re going to them, but if we did not move forward, we would just have no body-worn cameras.”
The cost, which will be paid for out of the sheriff’s department budget over the next five years, brings RSO’s total contract with Axon Enterprises to $29.7 million with a contingency of roughly $3 million.
The original five-year contract was set to expire this December, but by approving the updated agreement now, Sharp said the department was able to secure a savings of roughly $340,000.
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