TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – On June 23, the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office sought to expand its contract with Axon, a provider of public safety equipment.
“Axon has recently come out with what they’re calling the ‘Axon AI Era’ plan, it will give us an opportunity to have all their AI in years to come at a locked in cost,” Undersheriff Shane Hoobler said.
The annual cost to the agency is $881,682 which will be covered by existing budget funds and the equipment and technology funds.
“We’re trying to wrap those contracts up to make life easier for us having only one contract, but also able to realize some savings,” Hoobler said.
Axon’s AI Era plan includes a new system that makes translating easier, a chat to quickly check department policies and a detector that finds specific people in video evidence.
Draft One, a way to generate incident reports in seconds, has been tested by the sheriffs office and is already helping their team.
“A month of having Draft One on with a trial group of about 20 officers, so about a quarter of our officers, we’ve already saved approximately 12 hours in that one month,” Hoobler said. “That’s with them basically trying to figure out the system at the same time.”
These systems are set to be usable by the end of the year. The contract was approved by the commission on Monday, June 23.
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