A suite of new technology equipment and services will allow the Peoria Police Department to use drones in first response situations, in addition to giving officers updated cameras and Tasers.
After a nearly 80-minute discussion during a four-hour meeting on Tuesday, the Peoria City Council unanimously approved a five-year, $13.8 million contract with Axon Enterprises to acquire the company’s premium package.
“We want to get on scene as fast as we can [and] see what we’re dealing with, whether it’s a fire, an overturned vehicle, a missing person. There’s so many possibilities,” Police Chief Brad Dixon said in his detailed presentation.
“We can tell if somebody’s armed or not armed, and then we can also clear calls. We’ve been on scene of other municipalities that have drone as a first responder, and some of these calls are cleared because there’s nothing there.”
Dixon stressed that data and video footage obtained by the drones gets posted to the department’s transparency dashboard, and the cameras do not have facial recognition capabilities.
“This is not a surveillance tool. This is a tool we use to respond to calls for service, so the call has to come in for the drone to go out,” he said, noting his department won’t be the only one benefiting from the technology.
“Drone as a first responder isn’t just for police; it’s for all city to use — first responders, AMT, police, fire.”
In addition to the drones, the new suite of services and equipment includes upgrades to officers’ body-worn cameras and patrol vehicle dashcams, modernized Tasers with less-lethal, and a virtual reality training feature.
“We’re going to have some pretty amazing technology to train,” said Dixon. “It’s immersive and there’s de-escalation techniques. There’s mental health training.
“You see what it’s like from that other person’s view, and then once that scenario has gone through, then you switch and you’ve got to go through a series of choices on how you approach this person.”
Dixon said one of the biggest selling points was the inclusion of unlimited data storage, which was only available through Axon’s premier platform.
“Some of this data that we’re talking about, we have to keep forever,” he said. “We can never get rid of it, so we have to have a storage solution that works.”
Dixon said funding for the Axon platform is already built into the police department’s annual budget.
“I think that this technology will certainly make your department more efficient,” said Mayor Rita Ali, addressing Dixon. “I would want to encourage you to ramp up as quickly as possible, with all the necessary training, so that you can hit the ground running and really try to maximize all the capabilities.”
