Taser International, the company that manufactures stun guns and body cameras, announced this week that it was launching a program to provide free body cameras to “every police officer in America.”.
The company, now called Axon, said it will also provide supporting hardware, software, data storage, training, and support to police departments free of cost for one year.
It’s unclear how the offer will affect the Baltimore City and Baltimore County police departments, which have already signed multimillion-dollar contracts with the company to equip their officers with body cameras.
“We are continuing to explore those options with Axon,” said Baltimore Police spokesman Detective Jeremy Silbert.
“This will apply to any and all agencies that want to test and evaluate,” spokesman Steve Tuttle wrote in an email.
Baltimore signed an $11.6 million contract with Taser to equip 2,500 officers with body cameras by January 2018.
The county announced last year an eight-year, $12.5 million contract with Taser for 1,435 cameras.