Aubrey's police department wants to replace a patchwork of Axon contracts with a single 10-year agreement that covers everything from body cameras to drones, at a projected cost of about $4.25 million over the decade. The City Council takes it up Thursday, Oct. 22.
The council first signed with Axon Enterprise during the 2024-25 budget process for in-car video, body-worn cameras, interview room recording, Tasers, video evidence storage and a drone program, according to a staff report from Police Chief Richard Brooks.
As the department added officers, patrol vehicles and another interview room, the deal grew into several billing schedules with different replacement cycles that staff describe as increasingly hard to manage.
What the new deal covers
The proposed agreement would start with 44 officers, each issued Axon's Body 4 camera and a Taser 10 Pro, plus the software and services that go with them. It would also cover in-car video hardware, routers and antennas, and Axon would install radar equipment at no added cost so speed readings show up in the video evidence.
Axon's pricing assumes the department adds eight officers a year, but the report says that is a planning estimate and the city would not be obligated to hire at that pace. Additions would be reviewed each year during budget talks.
The package includes a drone program from Skydio, a separate company, with a quoted value of about $218,334. Because Axon could not discount another company's product, it applied an equivalent discount elsewhere, so the staff report says the drones add no net cost beyond the contract total. The department would also get replacement drones during the term and keep the older aircraft.
