Axon Enterprise, Inc. (AXON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Today, we are going to host a webnar with a few of Axon's very important customers that have been with us for a while that we're going to hear from and we'll open up the opportunity to also ask some questions via Slido link, hosting the webinar for us and asking some of those questions will be Mike Wagers, Axon's Chief Customer Officer. I'll take it over to you to maybe introduce yourself. .

Sure. Thanks, Erik. As Erik said, I'm Mike wagers, I'm the Chief Customer Officer here at Axon. I'm approaching 10 years. And before I've been [indiscernible] and I'm feeling really old. I've been in this business for 30 years now, either public sector, private sector or nonprofit sector, all focused on public safety. I got my PhD from Rutger's School of Criminal justice. I've been a professor at the University. I've worked at IACP, I've worked at Amazon Web Services, building out their Justice and Public Safety business, and I've been the Chief Operating Officer at Seattle PD, but I've been here at Axon 10 years. I'm excited to have a conversation, not just consider, obviously, they are very valuable customers of ours. But certainly, recognized leaders across the entire profession. That's why we chose them for this panel and for this webinar. And so Erik, well, anything else, I would go and introduce the panel. We'll just jump right in. Does you have any introductory comments. I'll introduce the panel.

Sounds great.

We have with us, and we try to as we're thinking about how to put this panel together is we have Chief Darrell Lowe, who's the Chief in Redmond in Washington in the Pacific Northwest. And then I'll have, they come at this from different angles like [indiscernible] originally started down in California, but he's known as an innovator when it comes to DFR. So I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about drones and drone as a first responder. Chief Doreen Jokerst. She's now -- she's Overland Park, Kansas. So she's got the middle of the country covered. She was formerly at University of Colorado. And if you ask her question about Deon Sanders, you'll get a very funny answer. Spoiled the alert. She had no idea who he was when he became coach there. And she -- Overland Park is the second largest city in Kansas and part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. So she right now is in the thick of World Cup. So we really appreciate her time because she's got a lot going on to try to keep all the fans and the teams and everyone else safe in and around the Kansas City area. And then we have Sheriff Michael Adkinson, who is a sixth-generation Walton County native. I didn't know that. And he's been the sheriff sine 2008, he has been reelected 4 times, which is pretty amazing. But he's also different from Chief Lowe and Chief Jokerst. He also in Florida for his county, he's in charge, not just a law enforcement, but fire rescue and emergency management. So he has all under one roof, so he brings a slightly different perspective than perhaps Chief Jokerst and Chief Lowe. And he's also, like they all are involved, in national organizations. So they say not just what they see and hear and understand and deal with in their jurisdiction, but they deal with their counterparts across the country. And in particular, Chief Adkinson is the Chair of the FirstNet Authority Board, which is a pretty important position. That is the established by Congress, pushed by all the law enforcement associations to bring interoperability to law enforcement after 9/11. It just took a long time to get the Board established and then the Board is in charge of the Sheriff Adkinson chairs to make Sure FirstNet does what it's supposed to do in terms of providing that priority network to law enforcement, and we may talk about communications during this conversation. So with that introduction, maybe I'll just get started and maybe I'll start with you, Chief Jokerst. Everyone probably what they read and see on social media, things crime is still out of control, going up in the country, come out of COVID and all the aftermath of George Floyd. Just curious like what are the -- where do you see crime today in Overland Park or as you talk to your colleagues? And is it still going up? Or has it come down? And where are things when it comes to the state of crime in Overland Park, but also the United States.

Well, thank you so much for having us. I greatly appreciate it. Like Mike said, my background in policing is from Colorado. I served in a city for 20 years before I became the Chief of Police at the University of Colorado Boulder for another 6.5. So 26.5 years in the state of Colorado and about 18 months in the state of Kansas.

She started, when she was 12.

That's right. That's very nice. So crime is definitely different from state to state, and I don't doubt Chief Lowe and Sheriff Adkinson have different perspectives in regards to this from their communities that they serve as well. In Kansas for us and being just 30 minutes south of the Kansas Metro area, we're a very affluent community, 207,000 population. I have about 280 officers, about 100 professional staff. Our crime rate in our city primarily goes around property-related crimes for us. And so that's the things for us. They are kind of on the rise and a little steady, but a little on the rise too, definitely, as you mentioned, with the World Cup, in our backyard. That has changed some of the things within the past month in regards to what that looks like. But crime for us has definitely been maintaining more of a steady factor for us, but policing and the expectations of police have changed over those years as well. And kind of how we look at crime and what it looks like from an evidence-based methodology and how we respond to crime has definitely changed as well, being a more proactive/preventative model versus a reactive model? And how do you balance those 2 things out? And so I know, Mike, that was kind of a broad-based answer in regards to it. But property crime for us in Kansas and in our area is definitely what we see more than a high violent crime city person.

And is crime up. I mean, overall, I would assume crime is down in Overland Park. And Chief Lowe, same thing. How are you viewing crime in Redmond in the surrounding area, up? Down? And what are sort of the major challenges right now?

Yes. Chief Jokerst said, Redmond too is an affluent suburb of Seattle. So we see a lot of property crime. Crime has been down consistently year-over-year. What we see here in Redmond and across the country is the organized retail theft aspect of things. And the other part, we have unique challenges in the Pacific Northwest around the political landscape and overall lack of accountability in other parts of the criminal justice system, which create -- or contributed to some challenges for us on the front lines, actually, trying to keep our community safe.

That was a very diplomatic way of putting things, Chief Lowe. And down in Florida, I mean you see things a bit differently than probably Washington state, sheriff.

Well, I joke sometimes that we wake up some time to go, what is California and New York doing and we're going to do the exact opposite. so. But no, not in the policing world, certainly. I think in my area of the world, which is a tourism community, where that's what drives us. It's extremely prosperous that the crime is down significantly since the COVID endeavor. I will say something I'll bifurcate because one thing I have noticed that, unfortunately, when things go kinetic, the level of [indiscernible] is significantly higher. The level of force is significantly higher when it does go kinetic. And that is -- I think that's a change because you have this long period, and I suspect it's the same for both chiefs would say the same that when we're seeing it here, once we have that transition into that action, it becomes much, much more serious.

And you mean when you're engaging a suspect and when the suspect doesn't obey commands.

Much quickly to deadly force situations than had dealt with in the past. And I think there's numerous reasons for that, a couple Obviously, the plethora of issues involving mental health and things of that nature. there are also some pretty serious firearm considerations and things of that nature. But yes, when it does go kinetic, we lost a deputy this last year. And for the time of the encounter until the actual incident ended was 45 seconds over nothing. And that has been indicative of the kind of things we've seen here, but by and large, extremely safe as things stand in contrast.

No, I don't know where staffing -- I know where it sort of stands nationally. Just curious anybody's take is recruiting up, down, staffing up, down. How are you seeing that going forward? That's always a question we get, like are departments have they recovered? Or is this just a new world of the staffing levels that you're at today? And I'll get -- I'll thrown it out to any of you.

Well, from go ahead, Mike.

No, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I was just going to say, from our department, I've been here about 18 months, Mike. When I stepped into the organization, we had 41 open commission positions. So authorized 280. So having 41 open is quite substantial in regards to the organization. Now we have about 8 commission position open, which still means people have to go to the Police Academy and ask the Chief in Sheriff. By the time you hire someone on to the time that, that person is out on the street, you're looking at almost a year in time frame. So the numbers are increasing, and I say we're trending in the right direction, but it still takes a minute to see that out on control, serving our community and more of a solo status by themselves and forefront. When I came to Overland Park, Kansas, I did some listing sessions, meeting with different professional staff and commission throughout the organization and recruitment came up, but it was really great one of our police officers said, "Well, Chief, are you looking at recruitment" and that's your issue is retention your issue and that was a really value point because to me, retention does start in onboarding. And so we did look at our retention, and I'm pleased to say that we're below the national average when it comes to turnover within an organization. With that being said, I still think I have probably 25-or-so eligible for retirement. So I have 25-, 30-year plus employees that we should be celebrating and highlighting because they made it successfully to having an amazing career and leaving a lasting legacy. So retention -- you can't talk about recruitment, I guess, without talking about retention as well, which means then you can't talk about those things without talking about wellness and the great things we are doing better within our respective organizations when it comes to really supporting our -- supporting our people that support our communities. And so we are doing much better when it comes to recruitment, I feel applications definitely are going up. But I would say I've seen a change in those that are coming into the profession. And so I interview all new recruits coming in and saying, why did you pick Overland Park police department and what resonated with you? And I definitely see a higher likelihood that people say, it's your tech, it's your drones. I want to get into this. It's your co-responder units, it's social services, those type things. Then back in the day when I saw more of the SWAT, it's your canines. And we still get those responses but large in part, I get more technology-based interest and really working in more of a co-responder police officer type role as well in community engagement type role. And so I'd say we're seeing a change too in those that are applying to our respective organizations.

Interesting. Chief Lowe or Sheriff Adkinson, are you seeing similar things?

Yes, similar thing. So unfortunately, Washington is 51st in the nation when it comes to a number of police officers. So it's a challenge holistically within my particular agency. We are as close -- I've been here almost 7 years. I have 4 vacancies right now and I pass my recruitment unit. I keep saying, I need, 4, I need 4, but like Jokerst said, it takes about a year from application to deployment, which is a challenge and that feeds into a bigger conversation around budgets and FTE allocations and getting people to understand that unlike other positions within a municipality, we can't just run recruitment, have a person and onboard them in 30, 45 days is, it's a year-long process. So we have to get ahead of the curve because if we get to a point where we are fully staffed and we stop accepting applications, it's going to take a minimum of a quarter for us to get back into the cycle because we use a centralized testing service. So that contributes to some of the challenges in fairness to our current governor. He did allocate $100 million for recruitment and retention of police office throughout the state. But as I say, there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing it's free money. That was tied to a public safety sales tax which feeds into yet again some of the political challenges and dynamics with the region around progressive taxing, et cetera. So while there is hope on the horizon here is, I won't call it, pot of gold, there is a pot of money available. It has some challenges that go along with it.

Sheriff, I now in Florida, recruitment retention budgets are slightly different than the rest of the country.

Yes. It's interesting. It's -- I would say that we're fundamentally in the best shape that we've been in many, many years. But there are a couple of things about the change, and I think it's very extremely pertinent, which is Florida does not have a state income tax. So that matters quite a bit in our recruitment. And we do things like the out-of-state a $10,000 hiring bonus. If you come to us from out of state, I mean that's supported by the governor and by most of the sheriff. So we don't have a state police in Florida. We look a little bit different from that in that regard. But I will tell you there is a thing on the horizon where we are going to vote as to whether or not essentially eliminate property tax in the state of Florida. And the effects of that could be quite frankly, catastrophic. We're trying to figure out what that's going to look like to Chief Lowe's point, there is no such thing as a free lunch and is specifically written in that they're not going to cut Sheriff's or the public safety budget. But I just -- I don't know how that math works. So that will be on the ballot in November. But if you have a state with no property tax, essentially, no property, it's extremely low already and no state income tax, and you can't pass a sales tax, it's prohibited as a sales tax to fund that, not exactly sure what we're going to do. So we're -- and they're extremely, extremely, extremely supportive of public safety here. I'm just not exactly sure what this is going to look like if it passes.

And when it comes to budget pressures, so let me just -- so what I hear in talking to you guys and across the country, like the world has changed coming out of COVID and the aftermath of [ George Floyd ] and everything happened. Nationally, crime is down overall. There's -- obviously, there's some variation, but we do see property crimes in various jurisdictions on the rise or probably bucking the trend when it comes to violent crime. We do see recruitment and retention recovering but recovering in different ways. And I think as Chief Jokerst said, like that's sort of like new recruits see it differently than probably the 3 of you did when you joined this profession. And also you have to respond differently what you offer and as Chief Jokerst said about technology. We hear that quite a bit across the country. They expect the same technology that I have in our personal lives like everything is just on our phone or everything just works. So before I get into the technology piece, just curious like how do you balance like everyone's under budget pressure. And like they always add, we always get the question like, oh, how like departments where they stand with the budget. Florida's got the thing going on. I've never been to a sheriff's office or a state police agency or a municipal agency where they didn't say, hey, we're always under budget pressure. Like how do you balance that. So your personnel needs and everything that goes with that, which is probably, I don't know, on average, 90% of your budget versus the increasing demand to deploy the latest technology to make you more efficient, effective, which has taken up a larger percent, I would assume the budget in your agency.

I'll jump in. So for me, I look at it kind of a 2-prong test, does it solve a problem that exists and does it create an efficiency. The ideal answer is just to both of those, but that drives a lot of the technology discussion and decision. And the technology won't replace people. It just enhances their ability to do the job, and it creates that efficiency. So when we look at it, I know it kind of tease the whole DFR aspect of it. So when we went down that path, I had familiarity with it from the agency. I was out in California. So once it brought forward here, it was easy for me as the agency head to move forward with something that I knew the effectiveness of it, but then getting the buy-in both internally and externally, then became the challenge and then the cost aspect of it. But then when you see that actual return on investment, that efficiency, the ability to cancel a ground response unit to free them up for other high-priority calls. That is what gained, I'll say, the political buy-in and that buy-in is attached to the purse strings and the authorization for contracts, et cetera. So it's that balance, right? You'll never get rid of the people or replace the people, you just have to ensure that technology has a good return on investment.

I assume and you're seeing what we're seeing across the country, one, and I don't know what the -- I mean you probably know, but across the country, we're seeing the number somewhere between 20% and 40%. If you have a DFR program, drones are responding and [indiscernible] don't have to respond somewhere between 20% and 40% of calls. But now we're seeing negative response times, which is just something I never thought. I don't know what the word meant until we started hearing a word like the drone is getting overhead before the dispatcher is even able to get the call out over the air to send a unit.

I will kind of make a point about something Chief Lowe said to you that I think is pertinent. One of the things that I think agencies really struggle with is typically before they buy technology, they think about it for a year and for the procurement process for a year and then implementation for a year. And so at year 3, when they finally get it. If you think about Moore's Law it will be in 18 months, give or take, probably faster now. So they're hitting this rate of obsolescence it's about the time they take on a lot of this technology, right? And they tend to be seduced by it. And what happens is when they buy single solution optimization, they have a systemic problem somewhere else, right? You're going to have a downstream effect. So any technology that is multimodal that touches these different modalities, I think is where you're going to see the future across the board. We talked about AI. We've talked about some of these other things, but touches multiple either entities or sections in your agency, that's where you can get your best return on investments for efficiency as the chief was saying before. And I think that's the real bright future for me. When I'm looking at things, I think where does this impact multiple entities inside the organization and is it resilient to obsolescence in a shorter period of time. And it the answers those 2 things where you have to go back to Chief Lowe's point, I'm sure Doreen would agree with this, that's where the real sweet spot is that.

Yes.

And Chief, on the procurement process, it just hit me when just talking about it. I mean do you want to make sure when the sheriff was saying, first of all, should have a drinking game like who would have thought that a law enforcement leader on this panel is going to bring up Moore's law. I mean that's pretty impressive. But I mean -- but technology is moving so fast. Procurement can only move so fast as well. I mean how do you sort of balance that when you're trying to get the latest technology that your officers won't and your communities deserve in terms of reducing crime and everything else that goes along with it.

Yes. So part of it is understanding the process and then also having good communication with your vendors to sheriff's point, Understanding not just what your tech stack is, but understanding where all of your data is and how do all those things interact. And when you look at it in you have to start with that, right? So if you can start out mapping out your architecture and you'll have a clearer picture, it will make it much easier when you interact with your preferred vendor, so they understand what it is you're trying to accomplish, but they also understand the challenges that may exist, or equally as important, they will identify the APIs and the connections that need to be made to create those efficiencies.

I'm sorry, Chief Jokerst interrupted you...

No, no. I was just -- I fully support everything my colleague said. I think, for me, I've been here 18 months, but in less than a year, we signed the largest tech contract with Axon under a year. And so that really is building trust with my city manager and our city Counsel and our elected officials and talking about the benefits for me how to be community-centric. And so my department in the past had some challenges when trying to move things forward, and I just always say words matter in regards to what that looks like. So instead of saying this benefits of police, everywhere you want to say police or than either, say, public safety and community insert these words and so you can say the community benefit, what have in this technology is this. And so real-time crime center, and this might not work in chief Lowe or Sheriff Adkinson or they might not need this knowing their communities. I said put information and make our realtime information center community focus in Kansas, we do get these windstorms and we've had some alerts to tornadoes. I can say we haven't had one since I've been here just yet. But the real time information center has been activated on these storms out there and really been beneficial to our emergency management teams as well. And so I think for me, it's really talking about we are here to serve our community, how can this technology benefit our community as a whole, which police is a benefit from that as well and showing what that looks like, and I agree, making sure it's more efficient that it's not going to be obsolete over time. And I just always tell our city council, we're building this plan as we're flying it, which means we're going to have to turn and we're going to have to pivot and we're probably going to have to change some pieces and parts out, but the plan is airborne. And so I think, really having that innovative mindset to and those people that trust you and bringing them along with you as part of this journey. We have such new things out here in Kansas. And So I bring our community members in. We had a tour of the realtime information center. And I'm thinking ask any questions you want on governance, on accountability and thoughtful oversight on policy development. Ask any questions you want. And I think the more offense you play, I just say the best offense is offense then it helps with those understanding and educational pieces as you keep developing these things out.

Chief Jokerst, Sheriff Adkinson and Chief Lowe, have all been to Scottsdale, here at our worldwide headquarters or something we call our CEO Summits. Sheriff Adkinson, we got bonus points if you'd actually talked about [indiscernible] in a law of accelerating returns, that would have made Rick really happy, but you dig at it in with Moore's Law. And Chief Jokerst is out here in terms of words matter and thinking about how to -- I mean technology, especially just what's happening today and how people are thinking about AI and it could be scary and you're seeing the protests against data centers and everything else. But I mean I've seen some really thoughtful police leaders about how they implement new -- including 3 on the panel today about how to implement new technologies in their communities, which, again, can be scary and being implemented by agencies who have the constitutional right to domestically to take away your life or liberty like it does take -- it's a lot more than just what AI can do. And one quick story on Chief Jokerst, we have made it clear that back in 2018, we put a pause on facial recognition because the technology just wasn't there. We said we continue doing the research, and we have and the top algorithms, by the way, that we evaluated in 2017, 2018, not even at the top 500 today. So it's getting really good, better than humans. But what Chief Jokerst pointed out, like we're not really doing facial recognition. We're not trying to use the camera to scan everybody in trying to identify there's Darrell Lowe. There's Michael Adkinson. You're looking -- you're matching that against the list and chief Jokerst like that's face matching. And that means something very different. And when I talk to my community, that is -- that would be more acceptable than facial recognition. And without that feedback, we would have still been calling it facial recognition. So chief Jokerst gave us just like all these law enforcement leaders do when they we interact with them like we listen to what they say, and that's been super important because we can build the technology, but if they can't procure it and they can't implement it in the right ways in their communities, it doesn't matter.

Mike, can I just add something real quick that because I think Doreen touched on that and that is nomenclature matters, right? And so when we're doing these kind of things a lot of times, as you're talking about, I think we said off air the policies and the procedures need to be in place prior to the application of these new technologies, and that's where the buying comes in. Rachel Botsman, to us, she's an economist, talks a lot about currency of trust. And I think we've got this thing backwards. We should be building the currency of trust with the technology and introducing the technology with the policy already in place, not the other way around. And I think that's a real opportunity to be better in the way we do it.

Yes. And how do -- like -- I mean by the way, a couple of things. We will get to your questions. Erik reminded me that there's a slido link in there. But just curious, like -- I mean we are just like any company like moving fast on AI, rolling out new things all the time. Like I mean, it is mind-blowing to me working in a company to see how fast we can move. I'm just curious how you take it all in as a police leader as a law enforcement leader and then think about how to use those technologies when AI is just moving and technologies is moving so fast today versus 18 months ago.

One thing part of it is actually leaning into it and understanding it. And I think that, that is a real deficiency with law enforcement executives. AI is that, that train is already moving. And if you don't understand it and if you don't embrace it, you're going to get left behind. And oftentimes, that can be scary to come to shares point. Sometimes we wait nobody wants to necessarily be the first, right? Because if it goes bad, it's very public and could not be good for a community and agency, et cetera.

I think leaders need to understand it to participate with the vendors to help make it better to talk about our pain points to talk about our concerns. And then once you understand it, perhaps, you don't do a department-wide rollout. You start with a pilot to test it to ensure that it meets your expectations from a deployment perspective because Kansas is different than Washington different than Florida. And while we can all use the same technology, we may all use it slightly differently. In Florida this year, we may be able to crank it up to 100. I may have to start at 65. And in Kansas, it may be somewhere in the middle. And so that's the sweet spot. But we as leaders have an obligation to ensure that we have the knowledge because at the end of the day we have to stand in front of it to sell it to our community, to our legislative bodies. But equally as important, we have to stand behind it and the decision that we made to deploy these types of technologies. And the best way to do that is to understand it, to really lean in and engage in the process.

I don't -- I mean I would generally -- directionally, I think you're right, Florida, they can crank it up to 100, Washington State, I was going to probably say 30% or 40%. I will give you credit Chief lowe. You're out there. Like you -- I mean a innovator in DFR that we'll get to in a second. I see some questions coming in about that. Like I'm like that's a big undertaking to make sure you're doing the DFR program in the right ways where it doesn't get shut down in a place like Washington State. So as I mentioned, slido.com, the code is axon. I'll just jump into some of the questions early in it now, now I should say.

And I'll mention when I talked to the sheriff and Chief Jokerst and Chief Lowe like this is not a commercial for Axon. I don't want to promote Axon, like they obviously aren't trying to sell Axon. So well, they're honest answers. So I ask the questions and you can give us the honest feedback as you see fit. And I mean, actually, I like to hear where we maybe haven't done so well, where we can improve. We're always looking for feedback. But I do want to make clear like they are not out here, they did not join this webinar to promote Axon. So I'm sure they're going to give you their honest feedback and answers to these questions. So first one, and maybe Chief Jokerst because I think you have our AI plan, but we'll see for the rest what AI products do you use the most for Axon as 1a; 1b, how do you tackle rollout, which we talked about a little bit adoption. Let's just stick with 1 because I think we did as far as like what products are you -- AI products, do you use most from Axon?

So currently, I would say a couple. I would say Draft One is something that we use quite a bit that just rolled out into our organization. And I can tell you, I sat through every Axon training for a Draft One, for a TASER like I sat through everything to number one, see how I say your trainers were coming out and training the department, what language they were using, what that looked like because I wanted to hear it. And so that way, when our officers have feedback, I could say, "Oh, I know what you're talking about, I attended that training as well." And so Draft One is one that we use that I can tell you, I was more restrictive when it came out as far as like governance as far as not opening up so many percentages of like, does that make sense of what they can type or they can't type. And it's something we have slowly cascaded over time to open it up or become less restrictive, I guess, is how I should explain that for the police reports. The second one, Mike, you'll have to tell me the name of it, but it's going to be when language triggers on a body-worn camera, it's a [indiscernible] review in regards to what that looks like, and we have profanities and we have hate speech. What is that Axon standards?

Correct? it is right?

Yes. So Axon standards, we use as well because you have all of these hundreds and hundreds of hours, thousands of hours of interactions with our community, and there's no way that you can go through all that. So having a system be able to kind of critique those things. but something we also want to do too is not just highlight, hey, Mike got triggered this many times, and here's what we're doing, and we need to help them. But where is Darrell doing an amazing job on this, too, these performance metrics should not always just be looked after the lens of negativity or punitive in nature, but also highlighting and expressing and congratulating, appreciating those when they do well. And so when we look at it, I always say, I get it triggers for this. But how do we trigger it over here to say, Mike's doing an amazing job. And how do we put something in his file as well to counteract that because I don't want the officers to think I bought all this technology and look, she's out to get me or it's this type system. No, these systems can actually be used to really benefit our teams and departments. So how do we level set that within the organization. Prepared is probably the next one. And when you say a 0 set for DFR, our DFR responds 26% faster I say than an officer. And that's just on the metrics we're currently using, but Prepared comes in at the same time to a real-time information center so they can deploy those drones. And so that's something that we're using, I would say, quite frequently as well. So all different ones, the dispatch one, once the police report writing one, one's a governance and accountability, one, if that makes sense.

And I'd love to hear -- I love that about Prepared. And I do think like because they're listening as the call is coming in and the AI can listen and translate. If it's a foreign language, just listen for keywords faster than what a human could type, understand and type and dispatch. So love that. So you'll be happy to know we're going to supercharge standards coming soon with some additional AI features to make it that one in terms of coaching officers to your point, like it's not should be punitive like or did they do well, where could they do better? And then also to help speed up supervisory view because obviously, that's a major pain point as well. So curious and Sheriff in terms of AI, like -- and by the way, it could be questions about Axon features, but there's other AI features you're used, and I'm happy to hear about that as well.

Yes. For us, similar we have World Cup our backyard. So we're using the translation feature on the body-worn cameras. I just did our video for a officer speak 7 different languages. So we did a video with that. Also with Prepared and then looking at it. And so for each of it, we're kind of evaluating. We saw forms to [ Cheese ] point standards. I just went through a demo with your AI team for each of the platforms that are available. And again, it kind of goes back to our previous comments of taking that deep dive, spending the time, truly understanding what each platform can do, which ones make the most sense for us because, again, you have to be a good steward of the people's money while I would love to say, "Give me everything. Well, we don't need everything." We have a prosecutor's office that will not allow generator reports. So that makes Draft One not usable for us. So that has to factor into the consideration and the negotiation with the AI era team, how does that look for pricing, packaging, contracting, that type of thing. And there are other platforms out there that we use. We use a platform called Force Metrics and it's kind of an overlay for our CAD and RMS system. We have found that to be very beneficial for us, very affordable. There's other products out there. But again, you have to evaluate and to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to technology and then ensuring. And then for Axon works with Axon, right? I mentioned the APIs before to ensure that when you do have the multiple vendors and to the sheriff's earlier point about having the multi-modality or the single ecosystem, is really important that while it's business, the company's play nice together and this is the [indiscernible], the works with Axon thing is really important because having such a big position and a big stake in many police departments it's very important that others are able to plug in so that we can have some continuity of operations across our tech stack.

Yes. I just said, Chief, I'm not going to here to Axon. And now you're -- like I forgot about works with Axon. So thank you for the reminder. I mean that is.

It's important.

We are committed to interoperabilities. And like it is and we say this over and over again. And I think this is why we really picked up a lot of steam in fixed OAPRs against some of the challenges that are happening out there with some of the competitor -- or one of the competitors is because we believe there's your data is it's not our data. So we -- you should be able to share it the way you want to share and use it the way you want to use it. So and also that goes with any other vendor. That's why we have open APIs. We love for vendors to plug in and for us to be able to plug in as well because you should be able to use the technology you want to use, and you should be able to use the data the way you want to use it. So sheriff?

Yes. So it's interesting to me. I actually changed my mind when I came back from Phoenix in the way that we were going to inculcate this into the system, which was simply this. My kind of thought is that too much data coming at you at one time is not communication. It's noise. And so what we started to do is say, okay, let's write the policies and procedure for a system-wide implementation of multiple different systems. And so that's what we're in the process of doing around our policy. And I think what this ends with us is using -- the example that you rolled out, if you remember, was the -- where the DA had given the basic fact check on, say, for instance, domestic crime. What we wanted to double that with, we see it as a virtual assistant riding with the deputy, right, virtual deputy going at the same time. So we are kind of committed to this concept of the same person that may say that these are the elements of a crime that you need to make sure that you committed in this call that I can pull away from it. And by having our HRR closed loop in that system, say, reminder, you need to get your oil change in 30 days, way, what is the -- what's the agency policy on bereavement. I'm a Gen X kid. I would have said -- my day would have said looked that up. But it's the first time that, that totality of knowledge you have the ability to ask the question and receive it. So for us, it's about writing a policy to determine what amount of the report should the deputy sheriff of right prior to doing X., right? Or my firefighters in my case, or my medical teams, what amount of things should be self-generated. How do we check against the review. So we're writing the policy first so that we don't have multiple iterations as we add sections to it.

Yes. And what Sheriff mentioned, Adkinson mentioned that we do the same call as our CEO Summit and all 3 have been out here. And that truly is how we think about our roadmap and building what we're going to build. Like it's amazing if you just ask customers what they want, they'll tell you what's most valuable to them and what will solve their problems versus what we think will solve their problems. The one that I always like to give the example on policy chat, it was a chief of police at one of the sessions said to us, like, "Hey, can't you just upload all of our policies." And then they officer could just ask on their body camera using AI, like what is the policy on bereavement leave or I forgot my black shoes today, what are my -- what should I do? Like we would have never thought of that. It's just -- I mean we would have never thought of that. That came from the field that came from chiefs and sheriffs and others who tell us like that would be super viable to us. So we built it. And a lot of the AI era plan came from translation, real-time translation that. And by the way, we turned it on for every World Cup city and surrounding jurisdictions. Most of them, almost all of them have Axon body cameras. We turned it on for the World Cup just so everyone could have it. That also came from a chief who just sat in the here at headquarters and said, "Well, I can translate on my phone, why can't the officers translate on their body camera." So we're building things because of the feedback we're getting from leaders like they're on the call. DFR, we had several questions about DFR. Let me just -- let me put them together and you guys can add some of them how you see fit. One surrounds is it here to stay? Is it becoming -- and second, is it becoming more prevalent? And then third, any challenges that you had, and we sort of touched upon it, but any challenges you have with community acceptance. So I'll throw that out to all 3 of you.

Yes, serious day. It's taken the profession by gangbusters. Now departments are scrambling to catch up for it. Challenges around transparency. One of the things that largely made our program a successful one and kind of became a national model was, we have the camera pointed at the horizon while going to and coming back from the call, and that was the tipping point for my community because they were hypersensitive about surveillance, et cetera. But when we explained that to them and then also had forward-facing a dashboard, my running joke was for those in the Pacific Northwest, mountain out, when you can see Mt. Rainer, we have great pictures of Mount Renier, we should use that to offset the costs, make post cards and people got it, right? And so I said that was a huge selling point. And then the efficiency for the officers internally because for me, I use commission officers as my pilot, because I need to be able to establish probable cause or lack thereof in that call response. So taking a body from petrol at a time when we talked about recruitment, when you're trying to hire additional people created some internal churn. But once the officers realize that, hey, this actually saves me from going to a call -- the running joke was the loudest voices in the building that were anti-DFR. We're the first ones on the radio asking if [ Era One ] was available because they realize that drones going to get there in 90 seconds and likely canceling out from having to respond to that call. So it became a win-win both internally and externally.

Sheriff for chief Jokerst, any comments on DFR and where you see it going and community acceptance?

I think it's definitely here to stay. So just to give some perspective, our city is about 75 square miles. We have 2 hives, 4 cameras total, 1 in the north one in the center. So I don't have the south side of the city covered just yet. We did team up with some academics that are doing research on DFR because I wanted to show how is it working? And I just say there wasn't a true road map. I'm sure Darrell is using it a little bit differently to fit for his community. Michael is using it differently for his. And so although I was researching, I say best practices, really just practices that we're currently out there and adopting what I thought made sense for Kansas, everyone's kind of using it slightly different. And so I want to show that it's successful, too. That's probably my bias in it. And so far, it is. But data metrics should we be archiving now? What does that look like? And then just teaming up with some academics to look at that research and development piece. Because then when my contract is over, I want to replace and expand. And so that is something that we team up with a lot kind of looking at the research out there and looking at it through a different lens outside of policing in regards to it. I would love to see it expand to, I am not a fan of pursuit. So I would like to end all pursuits. And so looking at ways that drones can definitely take over time of pursuit, where the vehicle comes to its resting point, you can set up a better tactical operation that helps for the safety of all involved or police officers and the ones in the car. And so I would love to see this expand even further, and I'm very thankful about our community and department are a part of it. As far as supportiveness, I would say there's always going to be community members that may be something due to lack of understanding what that looks like. We adopted exactly what Darrell did on looking at the horizon to it from locations. I don't have beautiful mountains out here in Kansas, maybe some flowers and stuff. But we did a lot of those same things. And we worked with community members to develop thoughtful policies and also look at a transparent data dashboard in regards to where our flights are going and everything else. And so we are definitely very much when it comes to transparency pieces where were allowable, I would say, we definitely push those things out there, too.

I hope it's here to stay because I sold our helicopters everything [indiscernible] , so it better be here to stay. I think yes, listen, they have practical applications, how they're actually used as opposed to be use, is significant. From everything from search and rescue, where you don't have to deal with rotor wash down in the low vegetation area. I mean there's a lot of practical applications. I will say that additionally, I think there's a pretty serious insurance application and opportunity to be used there. One thing we noticed in Florida, particularly with hurricanes and things of that nature, is one of the major issues that you have is roof damage, damage to structures on the way. And so now we're in a situation where you can plug in a resident address and have that drone, check the status of, a the, roof; b, the structure itself without the individual have to go into a closed area. So if you're in the Keyes or in my county, we're about 1,200 square miles, right, with 26 miles of coast. And so if I close off 200 square miles of coast because -- people want to know, hey, what's going on in my home. So in the way that you could ask for a residential check or patrol deputy, they just want to see their structure still standing. But there's some pretty serious insurance opportunities to partner, I think, with insurance companies to use that to make sure the integrity of structures and roofs and things of that nature as well. So yes, I think it's got a real big future there.

Sheriff, you do have a fan listening because they just wrote a comment, thank you, sheriff Adkinson for keeping seaside safe. We greatly appreciate your work. So I'm not sure who that is, but you got a fan listening on the webinar here. Similar with DFR because we talked about Prepared, which is we acquired them back at end of last year. And there are several questions about this, so I'll just sort of put it all together. Like where do you see AI-assisted call taking a dispatching going? I mean it sounds like everyone is sort of sold on Prepared today, the features that where you use AI for call assistance, where you can triage calls, you could do AI for translation, which is huge. Paul's one story, like we hear multiple stories, but like maybe happening in your community, we had someone calling in outside of Baltimore speaking Mandarin. The call taker, the old way of doing business, you've got to hit the line, to get a translator on the call. Prepared, their AI picked up, the man said my daughter has been shot in Mandarin, comes up in English, the car gets dispatched, rescue as well. They're on the scene before the translator actually got on the call before they could translate this. So you're saying like just amazing stories like that. But I guess the question is like, where do you see AI playing a role with call taking in dispatch into the future? Like is it like DFR, like that's here to stay and that will transform how we think about call taking and dispatching?

So we passed the Turing test, what, maybe 5 years ago, give or take. And do you want to talk about? So AGI, artificial intelligence, I think there's a decent argument we've achieved that now, there is some people will argue differently. But either way you want to do it, I think from a purely practical matter, there's 0 question that we're going to go to parse and manage these calls significantly faster with much less Era using AI. It is absolutely the realm of the future. And I always thought the Turing test was a fairly low threshold because now it is so much better that it really is becoming difficult to tail. And I think with the Prepared questions and the road map for it to move down, I think this is -- we're all going to be moving to that very, very, very quickly.

I agree.

I was just going to say, I definitely think it's here to stay. I spoke with our dispatchers yesterday. They really, I say, support enjoy the new technology that's coming out. I also met with a real-time information center, since it plays over there. How is this going? They think it's a great feature. I get weekly updates on stats for both the real-time information center and just our new tech because I want to know how is it working? Is it working to the way we thought and those type things. And I definitely think it's here to stay. And I think once it is really more ingrained within our dispatch centers, more ideas will come out to say how about this? Can we do this? But people are calling 911 because time is of the essence. So any second set we can take off to perform life safety measures I applaud that. And so it seems to be really working well within our center.

I had a couple of questions about, and we did touch upon a little earlier just about AI in general, like we're seeing what's happening just in the world around us. sort of maybe apprehension around AI, perhaps job loss is coming, especially white-collar jobs in terms of what AI can do. Like are you -- and the protest we're seeing with data centers because of and pulling some states and say the pulling back building data centers. Are you seeing the apprehensiveness within your agency in terms of a adopting AI? Or your officers like -- and is there a split older officers, younger offices? Are you seeing any of that within the agency or they're saying, no, give us more.

They want more, they're used to it because we have been so tech forward that they're looking for. The next thing, like I said, we have to balance ours against what our prosecutor will accept. So we're looking at other areas, definitely in the Prepared side. I think that is the next iteration of what dispatch looks like. And as far as the job displacement concerned, it's just going to change how we work. right? There will always be a need for people. But part of our jobs as leaders is that workforce development is to train folks how to better utilize it. Right now, we're going through, call it, exercise around identifying a couple of groups of teams within my department to identify some of our repetitive workflows. I'm looking at a way to automate those using agents using various AI platforms, we have either AWS or Azure Gov Cloud. So we can work in that closed environment within our infrastructure, but to create automations to use agents to create these efficiencies. And while it's not going to replace the need for people, I definitely think it will perhaps change the workforce or the number of people because we can make the people that we have more efficient, but we also have to train them up and how to utilize AI and utilize these tools on these repetitive workflows and tasks that we currently do. I agree with the Chief. I think if you're not evolving, you're becoming obsolete, and this technology for me is complementary. So it's in addition to, but not in lieu of. And so I would say, in my organization, I definitely had a couple of tenured positions that were more, okay, let me understand this new technology, and I get it every time a new iPhone comes out. And like I just learned the old iPhone, so I understand what that looks like. But more often than not, everyone embraces the technology. And so knowing that, we really put thoughtfulness into training and making sure people felt comfortable with what that looks like and did kind of more of a slow, as my colleagues talked about, rollout to make sure everyone is on board. And I definitely have some people that are like cheap, let's keep this going, like we're excited. We want to keep moving forward. And so I did an internal survey when I got here and on just a few weeks ago because we're working on a strategic plan. And I said, what's one of our biggest strengths. And they put community engagement for our department and everything else, but they put technology. And I can tell you 18 months ago, my department would not have listed technology as 1 of the biggest shrinks we have going for our department. And so I definitely think it's embraced within our organization, but it takes leadership to also say, we're going to roll this out. And if I we need a pivot, we will. And if I made a decision I thought was great, and we later determined we should have gone left, then we're going to turn, and it's going to be okay. And so I think to just getting up in front of people and saying, "Yes, I thought this was going to be right. But now that -- I always say the best policy you write it with the best intentions, but then you're using it and you're saying, Oh, now the practicality pieces here. We should have wrote it more like this. And so being able to say, "Hey, we're going to change as we go and having that evolution, so to speak, I think it's really important from a leadership position as well. And so I say it's embraced and from my department standpoint.

I'm certainly not -- I mean.

No, you're not quoting Moore's Law and everything else, you're not a.

It's my mother's policy who believed to classical education. If you look at the average age of our deputies, firefighters and our dispatchers now, these are folks that are absolutely used to the next iteration of change. So it's really in the command level being able to stay apprised of what is the next generation. And one of the things I find with our folks, we have to be careful at the command level not to be seduced by technology. And remember, technology is a tool, right? It doesn't reason and we have to be thoughtful about the way we do it. But I think as far as my experience has been with particularly line staff the sergeant level, they are immersed in this from [ cradle and the grave ]. These are all Internet -- none of these folks are born prior to -- nobody ever gave them Encyclopedia Britannica and said to look it up. And so this is really what they expect. And in fact, they are resistant to things staying the same too long. So it's an interesting change from that standpoint.

Erik, Encyclopedia Britnnica where you used to have to go. These are big books, you pull off the shelf, you have to alphabetical order, you flip through it to look up information, that generation, too.

Probably learn something for sure.

And as we start wrapping up here, we got 5 minutes. Just -- and I don't know what Chief Lowe, Chief Jokerst and sheriff Adkinson will say. But like technology is changing quickly. You're trying to keep up the procurement process, everything going on. Like how -- like what are the key factors or the key things you look for in a vendor and whether that's Axon or not. But like what do you look for in a vendor as you make these purchasing decisions?

Partnership. Being able to understand what I'll say my pain points are. One of the big things that I share fairly freely with vendors is to understand the budget cycles of municipalities because that's not the same as the, I'll say, the sales cycle for a sales team, and you could waste your time because if you come to me mid budget cycle to the sheriff's other point, the reality of it is that deal is not going to close probably for another year because I'm mid budget cycle. So if you understand that, you can establish the relationship, understand what that potential customers' needs are and develop the contract, the package to everything and then when they are in their budget process. that's the time. And then also just flexibility, flexibility around the financing. Yes, it is a business, there is a bottom line. But if there is no flexibility in wiggle room, you're going to lose more deals than you're going to make. And while you may make a deal that is not optimum for the numbers. you've now got a customer, I'll say, for life you have a customer with multiple contracts. So don't be shortsighted on the sales piece of it, look at it from the relationship perspective and the partnership perspective.

I agree with what Chief Lowe said completely. I believe strongly about customer service. And I definitely believe in service leadership, and I expect the same things from our vendors. I want a real focus on community safety. I want it on public safety. And so I'd like to look at mission statements and visions of vendors to include Axon's that go far beyond the products and what they sell to show what the ultimate thing that is trying to be achieved. And so quality of customer service, and I sent you an e-mail last week, in regards to that, I appreciate all the stuff you have done for host cities. Axon has done and setting out additional technology and equipment, so something goes down in an organization, it's readily right there to be able to help. And although we haven't had to open the trailer or do anything, it doesn't matter. It's the fact that all the stuff is here -- and I just really appreciate that. I appreciate the quality of customer service and really looking at it through a community and a public safety lens.

Your e-mail made my day. I certainly like all feedback and all concerns and challenges and that everyone has my e-mail address and Rick's e-mail dress and cell phone numbers. But when I get a good one coming in like that, Chief Jokerst, that made my day. Sheriff Adkinson.

For me, it's probably a little bit of a parieto distribution in that. I won't -- if you could achieve 80% of the things across the multiple things I try, I like to be pragmatic about it. And so I think one of the things that happens is that a lot of the agencies, if you're not careful, if you don't have reasonable voiced -- unvoiced expectations leads to future frustrations, right? So if I try to buy individual pieces of technology because this one is the best for this and this one is the best for this and this one is the best for that, they don't mesh together. They don't work together. I would rather have that 80% that works across the board in a system than individual superstars, right, in that particular modality. And so to me, that really is what I look at how I understand that I'm going to add multiple pieces of technology that need to work together. And so I look at systems and how they're going to function.

To Wrap up, one, plug. I did do a weekly newsletter called the weekly briefing. I think all 3 are subscribers goes out to over 1,000 police leaders. It's not about Axon. And along with that, I'll do a podcast and both Chief Lowe and Chief Jokerst have been on it, not Axon related, just about trends in the industry. We need to get sheriff Adkinson on there. I can see that now. So if you're interested in that and go to policebriefing. Com. You can sign up for the substack and you could check out all the podcasts that are there. Chief Lowe, Chief Jokerst and Sheriff, Adkinson, really appreciate you joining us. I know you guys are super busy. We really appreciate you also being, I was going to say, viable customers, but we actually see as valuable partners. So we appreciate your partnership. And with that, I'll turn it back over to you, Erik.

I just echo those comments. Thanks so much for giving us the time. I think we and everyone on the line really learned a lot, and we appreciate everything you're doing for your communities and the community at large. .

Thank you. Everybody, have a good day. Stay safe.

Appreciate it. Thank you.