We posted a statement last week that said we need racial reconciliation and hope following the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and the countless others who have tragically lost their lives. The events of these past weeks have made us challenge the way we think, speak and act on race-related matters. Talk is not enough. We must engage in difficult conversations and become actively anti-racist. Today, we want to share the first steps Axon is committing to in order to eliminate systemic inequity, racism, and injustice. 

Axon’s vision is to make the bullet obsolete, reduce social conflict and ensure criminal justice systems are fair and effective. After this week we’ve learned that we can and must do even more. That’s why we are adding one more vision: Eradicate racism and excessive force in the justice system. 

Technology alone can’t solve the problem of systemic racism - but we believe it has a huge role to play and Axon is uniquely positioned to solve these problems.

Body cameras capture truth and provide transparency where there was none before. Signal technology, along with the power of AI, can help ensure cameras are always on when they’re supposed to be. 

Live-streaming video combined with other real-time situational awareness data and a re-imagined 911 experience can dramatically increase the safety of officers and the communities they serve by putting eyes directly on life-threatening and use of force situations in real-time. 

VR Empathy Training can help officers put themselves in others’ shoes and be better equipped to listen and de-escalate before they act. 

Citizen portals to securely share footage captured by citizens can create a direct and constructive connection between communities and the agencies sworn to protect them. 

Today, officers spend up to 40% of their day on paperwork— by streamlining officer workflows with powerful AI-driven tools like transcription and redaction, we are reinventing policing by ensuring more of their time can be spent building constructive relationships in the community.

The first step we took was to self-assess and reflect on how we as a company can do better. We are committing to take action for increased diversity and inclusion at our company with the following steps:

We are going to build a global company that represents the communities we live in and serve, where all employees feel comfortable to bring their authentic selves to work, regardless of race, gender, or orientation.

Hiring - We will be reviewing our hiring practices and standing up a dedicated team focused on improving our Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) hiring strategy and increasing diversity within the recruiting funnel.

Promotion - We will track and evaluate D&I data as part of all performance and compensation reviews going forward to ensure that we are driving a fair and inclusive environment throughout all levels of Axon.

Build a more open and inclusive culture - We will expand the scope of our various D&I initiatives to promote inclusion in the workplace and community and continue to facilitate dialogue by hosting events focused on leadership development, recruiting and community engagement. We’ve already begun to take the following steps:
- Expand the scope of our current and future affinity group efforts to ensure that their voices are much more pervasive and involved in key conversations.
- Launch company wide unconscious bias and cross-cultural trainings and continue to drive conversation and education around diverse perspectives.


We will seek to do business with suppliers that embody the same commitment to diversity and inclusion - Starting immediately we will change our RFP and supplier/vendor selection process to identify minority-owned businesses and add a weighting factor to our awards so all selections take this into account and actively encourage diversity as we seek to support minority-owned businesses.

Our next step is focused on how we can better engage with our communities:

We serve public safety. And public safety serves the community. It’s on us to listen to community members as we forge ahead on developing technology. We need to listen to communities now more than ever which is why we’re committing to take the following actions:

Seek out community input and feedback with all of our products:
- Actively conduct Voice of Customer sessions with community members to ensure that our existing products and future product development are reflecting the needs of the public.
- Support investigations led by community organizations looking into potential misuse of our products.
- Engage with law enforcement leaders to reform body-worn camera policies.

Drive active participation among our employees in the communities that we serve: Starting now, we are going to work with employees on how best they can engage with the community in an effort to give back and help build their own awareness of various diverse backgrounds and circumstances.

Lastly, we are committing to investing more in our products that can help provide greater transparency for the public and help drive reform within law enforcement:

Build more community-facing aspects to our products, to provide even greater transparency and empowerment: We will explicitly prioritize more capabilities that are directly community-facing and community-empowering. Examples may include more automated public transparency portals for data and insights, ways to ensure officers’ cameras are on when they’re supposed to be, and more.

Invest in the data, analytics, and tools that agencies can use to set policy and drive reform-minded compliance mechanisms: We will continue to balance the opportunity and necessity of using data to find actionable insights, with our ethics-first framework on key issues like retention policies. Our independent AI Ethics Board will continue to play a large role in these discussions.

We are committed to continuing the conversation to drive positive change. We are proudly leaning into this time of transformational change and driving forward in the next wave of policing reform. Everyone deserves to get home safe.

 Protect Life, Protect Truth,
 -Rick

Rick Smith
CEO and founder, Axon

A message from our CEO and founder Rick Smith. We posted a statement last week that said we need racial reconciliation and hope following the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and the countless others who have tragically lost their lives.

Where do we go from here?

ARTICLE: Where do we go from here?

A message from our CEO and founder Rick Smith

Axon’s partnership with Flock Safety provides advanced security for communities and the law enforcement agencies that serve them. This partnership makes it easier and more cost-effective for police departments to deploy a smart, ethically-designed network of both fixed and mobile Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) capabilities. 

For $208 per system per month, agencies can customize a deployment of industry-leading Flock Safety fixed-location camera systems and the upcoming Axon Fleet 3 in-car vehicle systems that include ALPR, other situational awareness features, and professional services. 

With this simplified offering, law enforcement agencies can maximize their ALPR coverage and results at a disruptively affordable price — building their optimal combination of Axon Fleet 3 camera systems for patrol cars, and Flock Safety cameras for neighborhoods and perimeters.


Join Axon CEO Rick Smith and Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley for a “CEO Roundtable” to learn more.

Tuesday, April 14th, 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern (Open to law enforcement only, requiring an official email under a public safety agency.) This session will include a CEO roundtable to discuss key policy issues and get feedback on the future product roadmap. Register here.

Interested in bringing Fleet and Flock Safety to your agency? Click the "Contact" button at the bottom of the page to get in touch with an Axon representative.

View a previously-recorded introduction to the partnership below.

Axon & Flock Safety Partnership

Complete the form to be contacted by an Axon professional. If you prefer, you can call +1 800-978-2737 and when prompted press 4, then 2.

Learn more about Axon & Flock Safety

How soon can I get Flock Safety cameras or Fleet 3 with ALPR at my agency?

What else can you share about Flock Safety?

How does Flock Safety’s ALPR technology align with Axon’s mission to protect life?

How much was Axon’s investment in Flock Safety? What does the deal include?

How is Axon keeping ethics and privacy considerations integral to the development of ALPR technology?

What privacy and ethics guardrails does Flock Safety’s solution include?

Axon’s Partnership with Flock Safety

Article: Axon’s Partnership with Flock Safety

The world has been thrown into a tailspin at the hands of COVID-19.

As CEO, I’ve turned my thoughts to Axon’s responsibility to help fight this pandemic. We’ve all seen businesses close operations out of the well-being and care for others. Conversely, this is exactly why we remain open. As you know, Axon’s mission is to Protect Life with hardware and software designed to modernize public safety. We stand with first responders who put their lives on the line to help our communities.

With that in mind, I challenged our team to think of ways we could help protect the lives of officers as they help protect our communities. We rallied around one question: If social distancing is the best method in defeating this thing, what can we do for those who are out there every day on the front lines? The answer was found in how officers gather evidence, which is a daily occurrence that typically involves one-to-one interaction with people. As of today, in the interest of public health, Axon is providing global access to the full feature set of Axon Citizen, at no cost this year, to every agency that is not currently using the digital evidence platform. 


Axon Citizen allows officers and dispatchers to send a link by email or text to anyone who has a digital file to share. This file is then immediately stored and ready for review and sharing on Axon Evidence (evidence.com), with zero in-person interaction needed. 

Below you’ll find more information about these tools, plus a few helpful Q&A’s. We thank all first responders for your efforts during this critical time in history and are honored to partner with you.

Rick Smith
CEO Axon

P.S. I recently hosted a webinar with more information about this program. Check out the recording below.


Any public safety or public health agency not already on our mobile platform who could benefit from using Axon Citizen for Officers and Axon Citizen for Communities during their response to the COVID-19 pandemic is eligible to receive free access to these tools. This includes law enforcement agencies, Fire/EMS, hospitals and other entities engaged in front-line efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. The offer is open both to Axon customers not already on the mobile platform and non-customers, and is available in any country where Axon currently does business. 

For existing Axon customers with an Axon Evidence Basic or Pro license, you already have access to Axon Citizen for Officers. Setup instructions and video tutorials are available on our Citizen Resources page. 

Agencies who have an Axon Evidence Lite license, or who are not current Axon customers, should complete the contact form on this page to sign up. From there, a member of the Axon team will be in touch to set up your access. 


COVID-19 RESPONSE: Axon Citizen, free to all agencies

Speak directly with an Axon professional.

Sign up for the Axon Citizen program

Axon Citizen - Enabling Social Distancing in Public Safety Evidence Collection

How do Citizen for Officers and Citizen for Communities help protect officers from COVID-19 exposure?

Have agencies successfully used Citizen during this crisis?

Who is eligible to use Axon Citizen as part of their COVID-19 response?

How soon after I sign up can I expect to begin using Axon Citizen?

If I am a first-time, Basic or Lite license customer, how long will I have free access to Citizen for Officers and Citizen for Communities?

If I am a first time Axon Customer, or currently have an Axon Evidence Lite license, do I get access to all the features of Axon Evidence Basic during this program?

Why would an agency sign up for OSP 7+ if Axon Citizen for Communities is free?

If I am an existing Citizen customer, can I get the service for free for the remainder of 2020?

What happens to my data if I do not plan to use Citizen beyond the end of 2020?

What security protocols exist to ensure that data is securely transmitted to Axon Evidence?

When will this offer be available outside of the United States & Canada?

How do I get started?

Any public safety or public health agency not already on our mobile platform who could benefit from using Axon Citizen for Officers and Axon Citizen for Communities during their response to the COVID-19 pandemic is eligible to receive free access to these tools. This includes law enforcement agencies, Fire/EMS, hospitals and other entities engaged in front-line efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. The offer is open both to Axon customers not already on the mobile platform and non-customers, and is available in any country where Axon currently does business.

Joining Forces during the COVID-19 Crisis

The world has been thrown into a tailspin at the hands of COVID-19, and it’s more important than ever that companies like Axon make people our top priority.

Restaurants, shops, movie theaters and other businesses have ceased operations, furloughed employees, and are expecting major drops in their revenue. From the travel industry to retail and many others, many companies are fighting to remain viable and many people are worried about job security. That’s one reason we felt it important to ensure financial predictability to all of our employees through this crisis.

Many of our employees are dealing with personal challenges — whether it’s kids at home from school or elderly parents requiring care and assistance. But there is one thing they don’t have to worry about: financial security with their jobs here at Axon. This week, we announced we plan to continue to pay all of our employees, even if we have to suspend business operations as part of the quarantine. We are fortunate to have large cash reserves and no debt, enabling us to weather this storm while protecting our employees’ livelihoods.

Our products and services remain critical for first responders who need our support in their mission. We are taking extraordinary safety measures to ensure a safe work environment for manufacturing, shipping, and other jobs that require physical presence.  And every employee who can work from home is now doing so. If our employees need to stay home because they are sick, or because they are in a high risk group, we plan to continue to pay them at their normal rate of income. Even in the unlikely event we have to suspend operations, we will take care of the workforce that makes all of this possible.  

We are not retreating. We are accelerating our hiring to ensure we are providing critical first responder support. We need even more great people to power our mission to protect life. If you are interested, visit https://www.axon.com/careers

We’re incredibly fortunate to be in a position to weather this storm and can now focus our attention to helping our customers in public safety. We are working on a major announcement, in the next few days, for a new program designed to give back and help our customers through this crisis. 

Stay tuned and stay safe...


The world has been thrown into a tailspin at the hands of COVID-19, and it’s more important than ever that companies like Axon make people our top priority.

COVID-19 and Financial Security for Our People

ARTICLE: Financial Security for Our People

Financial Security for Our People

The discussion of public safety has never been more important. Attendance is free! Register today.

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About Axon

Where do we go from here?

Axon’s Partnership with Flock Safety

Joining Forces during the COVID-19 Crisis

Financial Security for Our People