Axon/Taser Once Again Caught Threatening A Government Agency For Not Giving It What It Wants

Politics

from the petty-and-vindictive dept

Axon, most famous for producing Tasers, is again making the sort of headlines it really shouldn’t make.

Everyone knows Taser. The company produces the most-used “less lethal” weapons cops deploy. “Less” is the key word here. It’s basically a cattle prod for humans but one that’s routinely deployed with less care than a cattle prod, even if its manufacturer instructs cops to limit the number of uses per minute or cautions against over-use of drive stun mode. People with heart conditions shouldn’t be tased, but no one’s consulting medical files before affecting arrests. People who’ve just doused themselves with gasoline definitely shouldn’t be tased, but you go to war with the army you have.

Axon is now more interested in selling body cams to cops. It will still sell you all the Tasers you want, but the real money is in the data storage and access market. It’s the inkjet printer plan, but for cops. The body cams are the loss leaders. Record all you want, but storing and accessing recordings will cost you, much in the same way your $29.99 printer won’t function until you buy a $70 3-color ink refill.

This shift in focus has allowed Axon to make more money while distancing itself from Tasers and the damage done — something it definitely needed to do as medical association after medical association refused to recognize “excited delirium” as an actual health condition.

For some reason, Axon seems to have a problem with accepting rejection, despite being the most-recognized name in the lucrative body cam field. A little more than four years ago, Axon generated negative headlines for refusing to gracefully accept the termination of a contract. The Fontana, California police department discontinued its use of Axon body cameras, making its $4,000/year contract with Axon’s Evidence.com completely useless.

Axon refused to take the L. It responded to the Fontana PD’s suggestion it would not continue to pay the bill for services it wasn’t using with this:

The only cancellation term is Termination for Non-Appropriations or lack of funding. There is a negative effect, however, as it can affect the credit rating of the City. Since we are looking at about nine months it would probably make more sense to ride out the rest of the contract…

In other words, Axon suggested it would report each month of non-payment to credit agencies, dragging down the city’s credit rating simply because it didn’t want to pay for something it wasn’t using.

While some might defend Axon by saying “the city signed a contract!,” that argument doesn’t hold up. The contract (contractually!) gave the city this option: “termination for convenience.” That clause meant the city could cancel the contract for exactly the reasons stated: it no longer required Axon’s storage and access services because it was no longer using the company’s body cameras.

Axon is doing this shit again, albeit for much different reasons. As Sam Kmack reports for AZCentral, Axon is again behaving in an extremely petty fashion because it didn’t get what it wanted.

Scottsdale’s city attorney confirmed in a sharply worded letter that an Axon employee had contacted a city planning commissioner’s boss about the official’s opposition to a controversial project.

“This type of action tends to raise public concern about the integrity of the city’s public hearing process,” City Attorney Sherry Scott wrote in a letter dated Friday. “It can also have a chilling effect on … public officials’ willingness to serve in their volunteer capacity.”

Here’s the thing about city and town commissioners. Being a commissioner isn’t their only job. Most commissioner positions don’t pay enough to be anyone’s only job. On top of that, their work for the locales they represent doesn’t consume 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

So, when Axon pitched the city of Scottsdale a plan to build 2,000 apartment units near its proposed headquarters, it assumed the city would choose to ignore the fact that the location it had chosen wasn’t actually zoned for apartment construction.

Axon reps attended a city meeting in January, hoping to convince commissioners that rezoning the area to give Axon what it wanted would be a win for all Scottsdale residents. The commissioners disagreed, with Planning Commissioner Christian Serena being the most vocal in his objections.

Last month, Serena informed the city attorney a member of “Axon’s leadership” had contacted his day job, allegedly telling his employer (Merrill Lynch), presumably insinuating that his day job presented some form of conflict of interest since Merrill Lynch has also made overtures to Axon in an attempt to secure its (still-undefined) business.

Scott confirmed in the letter, addressed to Axon’s lawyer, an Axon employee did contact Serena’s employer, Merrill Lynch.

“It is apparent to me that an Axon employee did contact Commissioner Serena’s employer to discuss dissatisfaction with Commissioner Serena’s public hearing comments,” Scott wrote.

This “dissatisfaction” was explained more explicitly in Axon CEO Rick Smith’s response to the city attorney’s letter.

“Your March 1st letter was in the hands of multiple media outlets within hours of receipt. Up to this time, we limited our correspondence with media out of respect for the integrity of the process,” Smith’s letter read. “Unfortunately, it appears some within the City are more focused on prioritizing political theater.”

Smith’s letter contends Serena may have had a conflict of interest in deciding on Axon’s project because “Merrill Lynch (and its parent company) Bank of America have been unsuccessful in winning Axon’s business” despite approaching the company on “several occasions.”

Whew. That’s not even a denial. That’s pretty much an admission someone pretty far up the org chart tried to convince the commissioner’s employer that Serena was supposedly rejecting Axon’s request for re-zoning solely because Merrill Lynch’s courtship of Axon had been unsuccessful.

Even if this were true (and there’s not a whole lot of reason to believe it is), the proper way to handle this would be to take it up with the city’s commissioners, rather than approach a commissioner’s day job and try to get them reprimanded, if not fired, simply because Axon failed to convince a city government to alter the regulatory landscape to indulge one company’s wishes.

It’s not a good look, especially for a company that relies almost solely on contracts with government agencies to make ends meet. And it’s definitely not a good look for a company that’s done this sort of thing before. Sure, this may seem like two unrelated instances, but if it’s been caught doing this twice, there’s a good chance it’s gone a bit thuggish in the past, but has managed to escape being called out publicly.

Filed Under: arizona, christian serena, scottsdale, zoning
Companies: axon, merrill lynch, taser