Watertown council approves $93,457 supplement to renew Axon contract for cameras, tasers and ALPRs

The Watertown City Council on July 7 approved a contract renewal with Axon and a $93,457 budget supplement to begin a bundled 10-year program for body-worn cameras, fleet cameras, tasers and automatic license-plate readers (ALPRs).

Watertown Police Chief Toomey told the council the package consolidates multiple prior contracts into one program and includes equipment refreshes (body cameras every 2½ years; tasers every five years), installation and virtual-reality training. "Everything works together with Axon, your fleet camera, your body camera, your taser," Chief Toomey said, describing integrated activation and cloud storage on evidence.com. He said the city currently stores roughly 30 terabytes of data with Axon and that the vendor maintains triple-redundant servers and an agency-controlled encryption scheme.

Chief Toomey said ALPR functionality is included at no extra charge under the 10-year option and that license-plate reads are retained 30 days (90 days for hits), while other evidence retention follows statutory and departmental retention schedules tied to offense class. He also told councilors Axon-provided AI transcription is not yet in use by the department for official report writing and that the department intends human oversight for any automated features.

Council members pressed on several points: Councilman Hoyer asked whether Axon AI transcription is in use; Toomey said it is not. Councilman Allen and others discussed the bundled nature of the contract and whether separate contracts would be possible; Toomey said the services interoperate and the bundled offer reduced long-term inflationary risk compared with shorter renewal cycles. Council members also discussed an annual-appropriation off-ramp in the contract and the ability to retrieve data if the city ever ended the vendor relationship (Toomey said retrieval is possible but costly).

Councilman Peters moved to approve the budget supplement; the motion was seconded by Councilman Moorman and passed by roll call. Votes recorded aye from Allen, Hoyer, Pauline, Moorman, Durrance, Peters and Shutti.

What the council approved: a 10-year bundled contract with Axon that includes device refreshes, evidence storage via evidence.com, ALPR capability, virtual-reality training and related services, funded in part by a one-time 2025 budget supplement to acquire and deploy new equipment and begin the program.