Morris agrees to 5-year contract with Axon for police equipment

The city of Morris approved a five-year agreement with Axon on Monday night that pays the company $480,584 over that period to provide new body cameras, tasers, digital evidence storage, a community video share portal, redaction software and other technical services to the Morris Police Department.

Morris Police Chief Alicia Steffes said the department already purchases much of its equipment from Axon, and the new agreement allowed them to bundle many items together.

“In addition, it gives us more tasers than we currently have and some digital evidence storage, which is a big deal right now,” Steffes said. “We currently store any pictures or video on either DVDs or flash drives, and we’re getting away from it now. Everything’s so big you can’t even do it on DVDs, and flash drives aren’t always dependable.”

The new agreement provides the department with cloud storage for digital evidence, and it also gives the department GPS locators on its officers in case of emergency.

Steffes said Axon provides good quality equipment, and the department hasn’t had any issues with their products in the past.