Axon's Sprint for Justice Initiative Delivers New Product Features Focused on Transparency, Truth and Officer Development

Eight new product features support strategic goal centering racial equity, diversity, and inclusion

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Oct 28, 2020, 09:00 ET

SEATTLE, Oct. 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the death of George Floyd and this summer's social unrest, Axon (Nasdaq: AAXN), the global leader in connected law enforcement technologies, was one of the first companies to announce its action plan, including a commitment to help public safety agencies in their work to address systemic inequity, racism, and injustice. As part of this commitment, Axon added a new strategic goal to its mission — centering racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. Today, Axon is announcing its first eight product features developed in direct support of this goal, which the company built through a unique company-wide initiative called Sprint for Justice.

Axon’s Sprint for Justice Initiative Delivers New Product Features Focused on Transparency, Truth and Officer Development

Sprint for Justice was driven by Axon employees' passion to do even more in service of Axon's mission to protect life. This initiative required Axon engineers to find a way to meet existing customer commitments and make room to build new features tied to the new goal. As a result, more than 200 engineers from across nearly every team in the company came together to build eight new features from start to finish. This intensive two-week sprint offers Axon's public safety customers even more tools to increase transparency, capture truth and support officer development. Learn more about Sprin t for Justice, here.

"Everything we build is already focused on protecting life and using technology as a force for good, but our product teams were particularly inspired by the events of this summer to do more and do it faster," says Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President of Software, Jeff Kunins. "We're incredibly proud of how this engineering experiment came together, and we're excited about these first eight new features to directly support our new strategic goal centering racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. We're here to support and put more tools in the hands of our public safety customers who are working hard amid incredible challenges — and we're committed to helping everyone continue to move forward and achieve better outcomes for communities."

"At Axon, our mission has always been to protect life and we are emboldened by the opportunity to continue to re-imagine public safety and support our customers and communities," says Axon CEO and founder, Rick Smith. "Technology is not a panacea but it can have an outsized impact on creating a world where everyone feels safe. We have the privilege to imagine how the world can and should be different and we have the capability to create and drive that change."

Sprint for Justice features include:

Priority-Ranked Video Audit - Automatically ranks videos for supervisor review based on keywords that are transcribed from the audio of body camera videos, such as offensive or agency-selected keywords, as well as on events such as unholstering a firearm or arming a TASER device.
Use of Force Dashboard - Allows agencies to access interactive reports on use of force incidents in real time within Axon Standards to drive compliance and empower better training.
VR Peer Intervention Training - Helps prepare officers with VR training to intervene and handle high-stakes, challenging situations with colleagues.
Hypermedia Markers - Automatically flags key events captured on body camera for review in Axon Evidence, such as when a TASER device was armed or when a firearm was removed from its holster.
Replay Coaching - Enables officers to request feedback on any incident captured on body camera from agency-designated coaches to help promote a culture of ongoing learning and development.
LED Auto Brightness - Auto-adjusts the body camera's LED brightness using ambient light conditions to help keep officers safe at night and still provide transparency by showing when an officer is recording.
Publish to Social Media - Allows police agencies to easily publish approved body camera videos to their social media pages and channels for increased speed and transparency.
Social Media and Webpage Evidence - Allows police and communities to submit digital evidence captured from webpages, including social media, to help get to the truth faster and save valuable time in an investigation.

"We're looking forward to testing the new Priority-Ranked Video Audit feature to help give our supervisors the ability to find the needles in the haystack of body-worn camera footage," said Cherry Hill, NJ Police Department's Chief of Police, William Monaghan. "Not only will it save us time, but by surfacing issues that need attention, it will support our ability to uphold the individual rights and dignity for all people in our community."

As part of Sprint for Justice, as with all product development, Axon leveraged its ethics framework established by the Axon AI and Policing Technology Ethics Board to ensure the new products were developed responsibly. In addition to working with its AI Ethics Board, Axon has committed to listening to community members by launching a forthcoming Community Coalition. With this group, Axon will conduct voice of customer sessions with community members to ensure that products reflect the needs of the public.

"Axon has a responsibility to support racial justice efforts, and we are proud to help build a bridge between communities and police," said Axon VP of Community Impact Regina Holloway. "We are committed to listening to the individuals who are impacted by our products, and are looking forward to announcing the members of our coalition."

About Axon

Axon is a network of devices, apps, and people that helps public safety personnel become smarter and safer. With a mission of protecting life, our technologies give customers the confidence, focus and time they need to keep their communities safe. Our products impact every aspect of a public safety officer's day-to-day experience with the goal of helping everyone get home safe.

We work hard for those who put themselves in harm's way for all of us. To date, more than 240,000 lives and countless dollars have been saved with the Axon network of devices, apps, and people. Learn more at axon.com or by calling (800) 978-2737. Axon is a global company with headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz. and global software engineering hub in Seattle, Wash., as well as additional offices in Australia, Canada, Finland, Vietnam, the UK, and the Netherlands.

Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc. and Twitter is a trademark of Twitter, Inc. Axon, Axon Evidence, Axon Standards, TASER, and the "Delta Logo" are trademarks of Axon Enterprise, Inc., some of which are registered in the US and other countries. For more information, visit axon.com/legal. All rights reserved.

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