After City Switched To a New Bodycam Vendor, Axon Threatened Its Credit Score (muckrock.com) 63
Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz shares an article from MuckRock:
The deal Fontana Police Department struck with Axon sounded simple enough: a trial of five inexpensive body cameras and, for each of them, a Professional subscription to the company's cloud storage system.
When the California city decided to use a different vendor years later, however, it found itself stuck continuing to pay $4,000 per year for an unused service. Exiting the contract, the department was told, could tarnish the city's credit rating -- even though the contract included a "termination for convenience" clause to avoid just that situation.
A police department lieutenant tells the site that they ultimately spent over $8,000 for the cloud subscription which they'd already stopped using. (Last year Axon made $160 million from the recurring payments for its data-storage products.)
The article also notes that Axon (the company formerly known as Taser, the stun gun manufacturers) now has "some form of customer relationship with 17,000 of the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., and it's actively working to grow its international customer base, making it one of the most ubiquitous providers of police technology."
When the California city decided to use a different vendor years later, however, it found itself stuck continuing to pay $4,000 per year for an unused service. Exiting the contract, the department was told, could tarnish the city's credit rating -- even though the contract included a "termination for convenience" clause to avoid just that situation.
A police department lieutenant tells the site that they ultimately spent over $8,000 for the cloud subscription which they'd already stopped using. (Last year Axon made $160 million from the recurring payments for its data-storage products.)
The article also notes that Axon (the company formerly known as Taser, the stun gun manufacturers) now has "some form of customer relationship with 17,000 of the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., and it's actively working to grow its international customer base, making it one of the most ubiquitous providers of police technology."
Re: GOOD (Score:1)
Yes. They push the burden to prove the invalidity of many rev gen. Red lights, meters, parking , speed...
The citizen has to take half the day off work, forfeiting 4-5x the cost of the ticket.
But, that is more of the exception than the rule. Unfairly fined is much more rare than common.
Radar and cameras are extremely accurate. And they are usually reviewed.
I could be a bitch and complain but it was me speed through the school zone, on purpose or not. So yeah, be an adult, follow the rules, and everything us
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Why would anyone do business with these guys? In their former incarnation they were busy interfering with coroners and other legal inquiries over the risks of tasers. Signing any kind of contract with these guys is like inviting a vampire into your house.
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Because 17 of 18k police depts are? When you're in the business of appropriations, you don't buy an off brand unless you have a damn good reason. There used to be a saying about nobody getting fired for buying IBM back in the day when they were dominant.
What I don't get about this story is why didn't they run the contract by a city attorney? Don't these contracts have to be signed off by someone in legal? Or are they Podunk enough that some schmuck has authority? And why on earth would they believe the
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This is nonsense.
One man's nonsense is a Slashdot editor's masterpiece.
Re:What the fuck is this story? (Score:4, Insightful)
8 grand? Who gives a shit?
And that sentiment, multiplied a few times, becomes the story of a $1.4 trillion annual budget deficit. It's easy to not give a shit about $8k when it's not coming from your own pocket, isn't it?
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They didnâ(TM)t have legal review all contracts.
Do many police departments have contract-law specialists on their payrolls?
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Obviously you'd fit a taser with a stay-on trigger, and throw it in the jello pit.
What's the news? (Score:2)
A sales rep was bullshitting?
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... They [tasers] are there to serve as a step between beating a suspect and THEN shooting them... The pain is an unavoidable consequence of how they work, not^w AND the reason for using them.
FTFY
Hand it to the city attorney (Score:2)
Sales doesn't like to deal with court appearances where the companies representation has to get involved.
Re:Can't call the police (Score:4, Informative)
Notice that the parent company is the manufacturer of Tasers. In all likelihood, the city buys Tasers on credit extended by the company. The sales rep probably meant that cancelling the contract would impair the city's ability to buy Tasers on credit in the future, even if it had no impact on the broader credit rating of the city or police department. If Taser-like devices basically have a single source, and the police department depends almost entirely upon its ability to buy them on credit financed by the manufacturer, this would be a major credible threat EVEN IF nobody outside of the company-formerly-known-as-Taser knew or cared.
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If Taser-like devices basically have a single source, and the police department depends almost entirely upon its ability to buy them on credit financed by the manufacturer, this would be a major credible threat EVEN IF nobody outside of the company-formerly-known-as-Taser knew or cared.
Isn't using a monopoly to gain leverage in new markets (i.e., product tying) illegal?
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It depends upon the context. Vertically-integrated companies are usually cut a lot of slack, as long as they don't BECOME vertically-integrated by purchasing existing companies and diminishing competition by taking them out of the broader market.
Let's look at Amazon for example. Back in its early days, it used FedEx and UPS for most of its shipping. If Amazon tried to become vertically-integrated by purchasing FedEx, then withdrew FedEx from the market and made Amazon FedEx's only client, the FTC would almo
Stopped using cams, but data still in cloud? (Score:2)
Not saying this is what happened but we are dealing with data that needs long term accessibility so something like the above needs to be considered.
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Why is government data being held by private companies?
All government data should be on government systems and available easily to the public and government alike.
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You want each small town city council to handle that kind of minutia?
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So end the county mounty silliness in the US and go straight state based policing and tidy up all this nonsense and save hundreds of millions in police administration fees.
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Yes.
If they can't manage that, they have no business deploying people with guns.
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Sure why not, that's what they've been doing since they've existed. Just because offices went digital doesn't mean everything should be out-sourced.
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Why is government data being held by private companies?
Technically its being held by a government contractor, hence the $4K per month.
Don't know if you've heard but government contractors have held lots of data for the government for decades. Manufacture and supply beans, bullets and bandages for the military. Do science for the government, hold that data too.
All government data should be on government systems and available easily to the public and government alike.
Has that ever been true this or the previous century?
Hmmm.... (Score:4, Interesting)
(ianal)
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It seems to make no difference either way because according to the article they paid in full for a 5 year contract already and the contract ends this year. It's a non-story about a bunch of people who didn't quit a contract because they didn't bother to read the terms and conditions which would of allowed them to end the contract.
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A taser probably won't kill. Probably. That also means place are sometimes a little too eager to use them.
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They say all that about the jelly donuts, too.
Doesn't suprise me (Score:3)
Having met a few of the top management at this company, I can say that this sort of behavior doesn't surprise me at all. This is a corporate culture that tried to draw an analogy between their taser lawsuit win-loss ratio to professional football team performance. Tone deaf.
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...and having dealt with the City of Fontana, I’m not surprised they paid for two years.
Parasites and poor cities...
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This is why we have lawyers and courts (Score:2)
Depending on the wording of the contract, the department either is or is not violating that contract. Even if we had the text of the contract here, few slashdotters are attorneys who are able to interpret it. (I'm not)
Then the threat to reduce their credit card score is either reasonable for a breech of contract or is a something akin to blackmail.
Courts should be able to sort this out.