The Fredericksburg City Council on Tuesday approved entering into a contract with Axon to purchase a suite of AI-enhanced tools for the police department’s body-worn cameras.
Axon is the department’s current vendor for body-worn cameras, tasers, and interview room recording. The new package, which will cost $1.9 million over five years and is funded through the city’s Capital Improvement Plan, includes technologies that will produce drafts of incident reports, translate 57 languages in real time, and transcribe audio recordings into searchable transcripts.
Police Chief Betsy Mason told council during Tuesday’s work session that the new tools will improve recruitment, retention, accountability, transparency, and service to the public.
“This is just another piece to make us better at our jobs,” she said.
There are three products in the package, all tied to the body-worn cameras. “Draft One” is Axon’s AI-supported report writing application, which takes audio from the cameras to generate police reports. Mason said 20 officers, including detectives, piloted this product over a 90-day period this past fall, using it to generate 177 reports, several of which were used in court.
“It saved us a huge amount of time,” Mason said, by producing in 10 minutes a report that would have taken an officer three hours to compile.
Each report still has to be reviewed and approved by both the responding officer and their superior, she said, and in addition to the video backup, there are other “safeguards, to include a lot of controls” to ensure accuracy. She said the city attorney is working with the department to develop policy regarding these controls.
In response to questions from Ward 4 representative Chuck Frye Jr., Mason said “Draft One,” which is also used by the Stafford Sheriff’s Office, would not be employed to generate reports from critical, sensitive incidents, such as officer-involved shootings.
The program “is not going to write those reports,” she said. “If it’s a big incident where something like that happens or if it’s concerning, officers will not use it. They will use it for things like larceny and mailbox vandalism.”
Mason also said officers will not be mandated to use the technology. “Some officers probably won’t ever use it,” she said, but many of the younger officers who are more comfortable with the technology welcome it.
“Translate” is another program that comes with the enhanced suite. Mason said the department employs five Spanish-speaking officers, but that there were four incidents recently during which no translator was available. Axon’s translation program will be helpful in those situations, she said.
The translation will happen “right there on the scene if someone is having a crisis or emergency,” Mason said.
Currently the program can translate into 57 languages, and “we’ve also asked them to include some languages we regularly see,” such as Pashto, Dari, and the Guatemalan dialect K’iche’, Mason said.
“Transcribe” is the third new program that will be added to the body-worn cameras, Mason said.
Purchase of Axon’s Fleet Management package is also included in the contract. It provides cameras for police car interiors, as well as mobile license plate readers.
In response to concerns raised by council members about the license plate readers, Mason said she understands that they are controversial, “but they’re for safety.”
“We are using them for criminal investigations only,” not for surveillance, she said, explaining that the readers have led to 25 arrests, including those related to one of the Canal Path assaults and another “major” assault that occurred at City Dock. They have also assisted officers in recovering $175,000 in stolen property and locating one missing person.
Mason stressed that data collected by the Fleet cameras is “secure and completely locked down,” and will not be used in any further training of AI systems.
Mayor Kerry Devine said she looks forward to officers being able to spend more time doing community police work and less time tied down in administrative tasks.
“I do like the translation feature,” she added. “We don’t have multilingual police officers through the department. I can just imagine how helpful this feature will be in times of crisis.”
