Taser will be renamed to Axon, offers free body cameras to every police officer in US

[William Gayde]

Taser International, best known for the non-lethal electrical stun guns, has announced radical new business plans today. The company will be renaming itself Axon after its line of law enforcement body cameras. In a press release this morning, the company announced the move as well as their plan to offer free body cameras to "every police officer in America."

They called the move 'all-in' in their effort to keep police officers safe and accountable on the job. The new program will provide hardware, software, training, support, and cloud data storage to any interested department for one year. This also includes Evidence.com webservice for tracking police video. Following the one year free trial, departments will have the opportunity to then purchase the gear.

Rick Smith, the founder and CEO said in his statement that “We are changing our name from Taser to Axon to reflect the evolution of our company from a less-lethal weapons manufacturing company to a full solutions provider of cloud and mobile software, connected devices, wearable cameras, and now artificial intelligence."

Across the US there are about 18,000 different police departments with three-quarters of a million police officers. This is a big market for Axon to expand more into. Like most cloud connected services, they can start charging a yearly fee for officers to use the connected body cameras. It's easy to see why Axon wants their cameras out on the streets and in the hands of officers to try out.

AAXN stock (formerly TASR) was up 5.4% at the time of publishing following the announcement.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68842-taser-renamed-axon-offers-free-body-cameras-every.html

 

[turismozilla]

Monopoly in the making! Not good!

 

[Rippleman]

Monopoly in the making! Not good!

not good, but brilliant marketing move.

 

[tonylukac]

Really like that manuver. They try to do that to me on phones and usually the mobile system can't handle it.

 

[psycros]

Monopoly in the making! Not good!

Anyone is free to compete.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Now all we need is for Adobe to step in and offer their premium video editor free of charge to the cops as well. It'll never do for them to be caught on camera breaking the laws they swear to uphold and they wouldn't want everyone to be aware of the fact that dirty/racist/homophobic/sexist/trigger happy cops do indeed exist. It's not good for the squeaky clean image they want everyone to have of them.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Now all we need is for Adobe to step in and offer their premium video editor free of charge to the cops as well. It'll never do for them to be caught on camera breaking the laws they swear to uphold and they wouldn't want everyone to be aware of the fact that dirty/racist/homophobic/sexist/trigger happy cops do indeed exist. It's not good for the squeaky clean image they want everyone to have of them.

There certainly are bad cops out there, no doubt... but more often than not I see people intentionally antagonizing and provoking cops. Sure you have some power tripping trigger happy jerks out there but a lot of the time you don't see the crap the cop puts up with prior to the controversial video.

On another note... I wonder how many times evidence.com will get hacked? Hmm...

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

There certainly are bad cops out there, no doubt... but more often than not I see people intentionally antagonizing and provoking cops. Sure you have some power tripping trigger happy jerks out there but a lot of the time you don't see the crap the cop puts up with prior to the controversial video.

On another note... I wonder how many times evidence.com will get hacked? Hmm...

Yup, I agree, the majority of them do work by the book. It's always that one bad apple that stuffs up everything others have worked so hard to achieve and it's that one bad apple that skews people's perception of the force. It's sad but it's also human nature.

 

[wiyosaya]

Perhaps a brilliant marketing move, but every camera donated will be a tax write-off.