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Background
In 2019, the Maricopa Police Department, with 70 sworn officers serving a community of 50,000 residents, decided to shift away from a traditional on-premise computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system and embrace a modern, cloud-based solution from Axon. This came after an increasing level of frustration with their existing system which became challenging to use, lacked key functionality and was increasingly expensive to maintain.
Challenges with their existing CAD
As an agency that prides itself on providing good leadership to its people by equipping them with up-to-date technology, relying on a computer-aided dispatch system, “...that looks like it’s from a 1995 platform and generally cumbersome” was an issue, as noted by Commander James Hughes.
Additionally, even basic functionality proved elusive. Before October 2019, they had to deal with maps a decade out of date within their CAD, forcing many users to use Google Maps to simply get their work done. “What we wanted was warrant hits from the field and our dispatch system didn’t offer this. This is something that has been part of CAD systems since 1982,” offered Jennifer Hagen, Communications Manager.
Beyond outdated interfaces and ineffective functionality, the agency became discouraged by the growing costs of maintaining the system. Even expensive, and overly complex system updates proved to be more hassle than what they were worth.
“Even after a $60k system upgrade, which broke our AVL, functionality didn’t really change. Additionally, when the FBI noted that we needed to become NIBRS compliant, our RMS and CAD vendor said they could provide this for yet another $25k. This federally mandated update should be part of their product” – Commander James Hughes
These challenges had negative impacts on responsiveness of service, employee morale, and officer safety. In this environment of increasing frustration, excessive costs, and lack of innovation, they were excited when Axon offered an opportunity to try something new.
The Axon Solution
In contrast to existing CAD vendors, Axon built its solution from the ground up without being anchored to decades old technology. This enabled a focus on delivering outcomes, such as increased officer safety and the ability for dispatchers and supervisors to “know before it’s voiced." What was created was a comprehensive platform built with a focus on modern user experiences, efficient cloud-based technologies and real-time situational awareness.
Leveraging the wealth of signals from sensors in the field, such as Axon Body 3, Axon’s platform provides an unprecedented level of visibility which can impact avoidable uses of force, officer safety and faster calls for service.
“What Axon provided was the opportunity to look to the future with body cam integration and auto tagging. When you start adding RMS, TASERs and other sensors it becomes a more complete system that allows us to take it to the next level,” said Jennifer.
Deployment
Axon set out to make this transition as smooth and streamlined as possible. In contrast to legacy solutions, which required substantial hardware and software provisioning on-site, much of the configuration and set up was done remotely without unnecessary interruptions. The Maricopa team noted that it was substantially simpler than transitions in the past, made even easier with rapid resolutions to issue tickets which took hours instead of weeks to address.
Even with COVID-19 challenges, which resulted in a need to shift to a mostly remote training experience, the Axon and Maricopa teams were able to quickly modify the training schedule to accommodate. While training sessions were shorter than what is traditionally expected, new users found the system easy to understand and incredibly intuitive throughout condensed trainings and more hands-on opportunities within “unbreakable” environments.
This transition to a new system has been made easier using modern cloud technologies. Rather than being charged for massive system updates, all upgrades would be available incrementally over time and are included in the cost of the service. This results in minimal disruptions, faster access to new functionality and quicker onboarding of new users.
In full operation
With deployment complete, the Maricopa team has been incredibly proud of the results of the partnership to-date. “I am 100% happy with the product we have turned out, in fact I want to be the first all-in Axon shop... ” exclaimed Commander Hughes when asked about his satisfaction with the delivered solution.