BALTIMORE (WBFF) — The Baltimore Board of Estimates approved a $153 million contract Wednesday for new body-worn cameras, tasers and other public safety tools within the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). However, some city leaders questioned whether it was the best deal for taxpayers.
The 10-year agreement totaling $153,217,966.56 is with Axon Enterprise, a company the city has worked with for over a decade to supply equipment, data management software and other tools. Axon Enterprise has been focused in integrating artificial intelligence into its public safety software.
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While Derek Canton, the Chief Technology Officer with BPD, acknowledges the cost has increased, he said, “the spend is increased over time, and that’s because, I believe that Axon’s increased the amount of services that they provide with their product offering.”
Under the agreement that was just approved, BPD could have access to enhanced training with virtual reality as well as tools to track real-time data to better protect communities.
While the contract was approved, City Council President Zeke Cohen voiced concerns about the lack of a competitive bidding process, and ended up voting against the proposal. Baltimore Comptroller Bill Henry voiced similar concerns and abstained from the vote.
I think we owe it to ourselves, to the residents that live here and pay taxes to engage in competitive bidding processes where humanly possible,” Cohen said.
“I do think it is extremely important for us as a city to go to market on any product. I think a long term sole-source contract has the challenge of it may well be the best deal we could have gotten, but it may not,” Cohen later added.
“It’s a complete system that the city has been using for a long period of time,” a Baltimore City official said during the presentation. “Could we get another company to come out and do it? Absolutely. But there are immense costs that would go with that. It would be retooling all the processes. It would be retraining all of the officers. It would be the data collection that we currently have in a variety of other things.”
A representative from Motorola Solutions, which produces some similar technology, also spoke out against the contract, estimating the city could save roughly $50 million dollars by considering other solutions.
Taxpayer advocate David Williams argued competitive bidding processes allows greater transparency.
“It doesn’t matter what this company provides. There should have been an open, transparent, competitive, competitive bidding process, so the Board of Estimates, so really, the whole city could have seen the different options that the city had at its disposal. Taxpayers and citizens will never know now whether there are other products, other companies, that could be doing the same exact thing for at a lower cost,” Williams said.
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