The Surrey Police Service is looking at contracting with Axon Inc. to provide software and hardware that's designed to technologically advance policing in Surrey at a cost of $12.2 million over five years with an average cost of $2.4 million per year.
The Surrey Police Board on July 16 voted to defer the large purchase to its finance committee for a decision as the police chief doesn't have the authority to sign off on the expenditure. The board's next meeting is set for September 11.
It heard Axon is a U.S. company with offices in Canada. Todd Matsumoto, deputy chief with the SPS, told the board that Axon "has positioned itself well in the world 鈥� they do supply many police departments across the globe with the body-worn cameras and other tools. They've created an entire ecosystem.
"The Province already bought the back-end or the storage piece to that system and we have gone out and made initial inquiries with Axon and what's in front of you today is really a sort of we can call it a subscription service. We pay an annual cost, the equipment is provided by Axon," he said. "Really what the large cost is, is the storage space. You can imagine one officer wearing a body-worn camera for one shift, recording six to 10 hours of high-definition video takes up a lot of storage and that is in fact a huge part of the cost."
What's included in this are body-worn cameras, remote piloted aircraft systems, mobile trailer cameras, automated license plate readers, pole cameras and in-car camera "solutions." The SPS is also seeking internal video camera upgrades in holding cells, interview rooms and impaired driving investigation rooms. "All devices mentioned work to record evidence and enhance public trust. These technologies video record operational events which must be stored," reads a report brought to the board.
All told, equipment the SPS seeks to procure are 350 body-worn cameras, 200 Tasers Model T10 as mandated by provincial government legislation, 50 fleet cameras with automated license plate recognition, 12 remotely piloted aircraft systems (that's drones and gear), four pole cameras, 29 interview room cameras, 14 cell block cameras, one Fusus subscription for the cybersecurity operations centre, 850 digital evidence management system users, 550 Investigate Pro licenses, an Axon Virtual Reality Training System, and 500 officer digital notebooks.
As for piloting body worn cameras, Matsumoto told the board, "I think we're aiming for about October. We had a soft launch for our drone program, Vaisakhi was our initial usage of the technology." He noted that all body-camera images, drone images, photos, video and audio evidence would be stored in a "cloud environment" that's an "efficient way to get evidence over to Crown versus burning disks and different things like that."
Vancouver Police and Delta Police are using Axon, he added. "It is essentially the gold standard, so that's the argument for the sole source."
Director Rob Stutt, Surrey council's representative on the board, asked if the SPS's evidentiary gathering systems are compatible with the Crown now. Matsumoto replied "yes, in a roundabout way."
"Over there right now, can Crown not tell you to come back and do 5,000 disks?" Stutt continued, to which Matsumoto responded "yeah, it's a bit mixed in the ecosystem currently because what happened is Crown's requirements were different than what the police agencies in the province needed so as much as Axon worked for the police it didn't work the Province so the Province through the Crown have procured an in-house-made digital image management system and the goal is for the two systems to talk to make it seamless.
"So there are various ways in which police agencies across B.C.get their digital evidence to Crown. It's not exactly the same amongt all agencies; some still are submitting secured drives which are problematic," Matsumoto continued. "It's a bit mismatched but we are very soon going to be in a place where Crown is going to be able to receive this electronically from police."
Stutt said this is not a new problem and he would like to see "for the benefit of the success of everybody" that this matter with the Crown be assessed "expeditiously, because that is one of the problems that we face when you hear people talk about catch-and-release and things like that."
