Rick Smith @AxonRick

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Earlier this year I floated a wild idea: open a company-wide AI competition to every single person at Axon. Find a way to accelerate the business. Winning team gets an exotic trip to celebrate. 248 people showed up. 59 projects came in. $285K in tokens drove an estimated $23M in value created. 4,000+ hours of monthly labor automated. 52 projects now actively being implemented. The winners: Team Blade Runner from Real Time Operations. They built a Fusus for deploying Fusus. One clean view of every customer, replacing a dozen scattered systems. Tasks that took an hour now take five minutes. Layers of manual data entry, gone. Customers get to launch faster. Communities get better protection sooner. We celebrated in Cabo. They chose sport fishing. I tried to keep up and vibe coded a fishing rotation timer so everyone got a fair shot at the rods. We caught 3 huge mahi mahi. Dinner problem solved. The trip turned into some of the most productive time I've spent this year. I came away understanding challenges this team navigates every day that I simply didn't have visibility into before, and we forged fixes together. That was the benefit I didn't expect. Congrats to CJ Jones, Kyle Simmons, Eric Maddox, Zack Simmons, Austin Emberlin, John Polydoris. Felt lucky to spend time with these fun talented teammates, and genuinely proud of their accomplishments. #ProtectLife

Nate Harris (Operations Administrator for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections) spent 22 years inside corrections before he ever touched a body-worn camera. Listening to him close out Week of the Customer had me thinking: this is why we build the way we build. Corrections isn't law enforcement with a different uniform. Two officers managing 140 people in a housing unit is its own discipline, with its own threat geometry, staffing ratios, and training constraints. For a long time, the tech that Corrections received was hand-me-downs, built for someone else. We're changing that. And conversations like Nate's are a big reason why. What struck me most wasn't the deployment numbers. It was how he thinks about data. Tracking probe counts by facility. Building training around what each institution's numbers actually show. Asking why before drawing conclusions. That's the kind of ground-level experience that should always drive how technology gets designed. On AI, he put it simply: Make sure the technology has good parents. If it's built carefully, trained on the right inputs, and deployed with the right guardrails, Corrections can make leaps that were never possible before. That's how we always aim to solve problems. When the people closest to the hardest challenges are pushing us to build smarter, not just faster, we know we're pointed right.

Sgt. Christopher Andreacola of Tucson PD walked us through what case-building actually looks like in 2026 — and I came away more convinced than ever that AI is going to fundamentally change this work for the better. Digital evidence. Forensic technology. Piecing together complex incidents when the stakes are highest. The work that happens after the call is just as critical as the call itself. The improvements I'm talking about aren't science fiction. They're about connectivity, efficiency, and giving investigators better tools to do what they already do. Faster evidence processing. Smarter workflows. AI that handles the friction so the detective can focus on the judgment. I've been early on a few things. LE data migrating to the cloud. Conducted energy weapons filling a vital role in the use-of-force continuum. Body cameras evolving from simple recording devices into platforms for communication, translation, and real-time connectivity in the field… and now into powerful AI nodes on an officer’s chest. Each time I made the prediction, it seemed crazy.  But in every case, the outcome exceeded what even I expected. That’s what makes these times so exciting, things are moving faster than any of us can predict. Moments like Axon Customer Week (Day 4 - The Case)  are why I stay close to the people doing the actual work. Sgt. Andreacola didn't describe a future problem. He described today's. And that's exactly where we're focused. And one more thing: after 39 years of service, Sgt. Andreacola is retiring from Tucson PD — and we're thrilled he's not going far. He's joining Axon as a contractor, bringing that same expertise and dedication into a new chapter. Thirty-nine years of extraordinary service, and still more to give. Congratulations, Chris.

In the UK, only 4% of officers carry lethal force. Sergeant Darren Pemble spent 27 years in that system. For Axon Week of the Customer Day 3 (The Encounter), he told our teams what it actually looks like to resolve dangerous encounters when a gun isn't the default option. A different model, worth understanding

Major Brian Kitchens hadn't been in Incident Command for five years. His first day back: the 2023 Midtown Atlanta clinic shooting. Active shooter. Unfolding in real time across a sprawling city. Today he walked our teams through it. Minute by minute, decision by decision. Real-Time Crime Center operations under live pressure. Axon Week of the Customer, Day 2. Humbling doesn't begin to cover it.

Axon Week of the Customer, Day 1: The Call I really enjoyed the fireside chat, as Karima Holmes, VP of Public Safety, Carbyne, Karl Fasold, Executive Director of 911 New Orleans, and Melissa Alterio, Executive Director of the Cobb County Department of Emergency Communications told us what living inside 911 operations actually looks like. We build the tools, but they carry the weight of the job. Grateful for their service, and for their generosity in sharing their compelling stories today.

Stopped in the Capitol Rotunda before  Memorial Day to admire Trumbull’s painting: Washington resigning his commission to Congress in 1783. The man who led those who died for the Revolution handed back his sword and went home to his farm. No crown. No throne. Just a republic he helped create, and then refused to rule. Downstairs in the same building is the crypt they prepared for him. It’s empty. He wouldn’t be buried there either. That was for monarchs. Two hundred and forty years later, that choice still echoes. Grateful to Representative David Schweikert @RepDavid for such a meaningful tour. He’s exactly the kind of public servant this place needs more of.

I spent the week in DC, toured our Capitol, and walked out to this view. Arlington Cemetery is straight ahead, just beyond the Washington Monument. You can’t see it from here. But it serves as the sacred foundation for everything else, from our grand government buildings to our precious freedoms. This Memorial Day weekend, I’m humbled by those who gave everything so the rest of us could have something worth protecting.

Axon Week in Nashville. 3,000 people. 30+ years. I looked out at that crowd and thought: same mission we started with. Wildly different world we’re operating in. Here’s everything we covered 📺 youtu.be/cHSlFyYNd0E

10 years ago, @sapinker’s research convinced me violence was in long-term decline… and that technology could push it further. That conviction became “The End of Killing.” At Axon Week on a stage in front of 3,000 people, I got to tell him so. His argument, backed by centuries of data: policing reduces violence. In academia, that sentence is still "deeply controversial." In the data, it's uncontroversial. And America, he says, is underpoliced and overincarcerated. New Boldly Go. 🎧LINK  youtube.com/watch?v=ZsYkLH…

Records management system transitions are the most universally hated, painful, expensive, and slow projects in all of public safety. Ask any chief. Ask any IT director. They’ll tell you the same thing: years of delays, blown budgets, frustrated officers, broken promises. It’s the swamp every agency dreads wading through. So when a 45-year veteran of law enforcement — Chief Dennis Larsen of the @TulsaPolice Department — reaches out unprompted to tell us how easy and fast the Axon Records rollout has been, that stops me in my tracks. Meaningful moments matter. When a leader with that much experience praises what we’ve built to support the work that protects his community, our entire team feels it. Thank you, Chief Larsen. Thank you, Tulsa PD. And thank you to every customer who has trusted us to walk this road with you.

What Officer Antonio Richardson did on the Dames Point Bridge is the job at its highest form. 40 minutes. An outstretched hand and a prayer. And a man walked back from the edge. No tech in the world replaces this. We just want to provide the right tech to give officers the time, info, and backup to be there when it matters. Grateful for @JSOPIO. If you're struggling, please reach out. Dial 988

Jax Sheriff's Office @JSOPIO

a month ago

Whatever you’re going through, you can get through it. Those are the words Officer Antonio Richardson shared with a young man on Sunday, April 12. The young man was on top of the Dames Point Bridge, ready to take his own life. Our District 2 and 6 Patrol officers responded to

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Dispatcher. Officer. Paramedic. Nurse. All heroes in the same chain. But in that last link, 2 nurses are assaulted every hour in the US. That’s a public safety crisis hiding in plain sight. They deserve better, and we haven’t forgotten them. It’s National Nurses Week, thank you for the vital role you play.

Largest-ever national study on classroom phone bans is out. Headline finding: disappointing. Test scores essentially flat. Suspensions up 16% in year one. The kind of result that makes people want to quit. But read the rest:  → Phone use in class dropped from 61% to 13%  → Discipline issues back to baseline by year three → Student well-being recovered and turned positive by year two  → 74% of American adults support these bans. Teachers say it works. Kids, even those complaining, say it works. Every parent raising teenagers knows it works. The lead Stanford researcher's read: don't mistake messy early data for failure. Most things worth doing don't pay off in year one. Ask any founder. Ask any mom or dad. Stay the course. nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

A driver crashed off the road in Fairfax County last week. Down a ravine, no witnesses, hidden from view. The driver's phone auto-notified dispatch. A Skydio drone launched and found the vehicle from the air. Officers were guided directly to the driver. Same DFR program, different call: 911 reports a man with a bow and arrow. Drone arrives in 57 seconds. It's a man in crisis with a stick. Officers de-escalate before anyone gets hurt. Tech finds the problem. Humans solve it. That's why we build. fcpdnews.org/2026/04/22/dro…

This is just such a great example of how markets just outperform well intended regulations just about every time. Texas blowing past California in clean energy because the market forces are less constrained by regulation.

Ramez Naam @ramez

a month ago

Everyone who cares about climate should understand this. Texas, with no pro-climate policies, has blown passed California in clean energy. In large part because Texas has less red tape and makes it easier to build.

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wired.com/story/the-day-…

Five-year survival rate for stage 4 pancreatic cancer: 2%. Most people don't feel a thing until it's built that deadly head start. Mayo Clinic just published an AI that catches it on routine scans up to three years before diagnosis — on scans radiologists looked at and cleared as normal. Nearly ten years ago, my friend Matt Bencke was 45, running a company he built to teach machines how to see. Thought he tweaked his back lifting a chair on vacation. Stage 4 diagnosis within weeks. Gone three months later, leaving a wife, two young daughters and a life full of plans. From his hospital bed, Matt wrote an essay for Wired about the day everything changed. It's worth your time. Matt spent his career teaching machines to see. Now AI sees what the best human eyes couldn't. That's the world he was building toward. This won't bring him back. But somewhere down the line, this technology will catch what we keep missing. And someone will get more time. Someone's kids get more years with their dad. Someone's back pain turns out to be just a back pain, because the scan already caught what was hiding. I still think about Matt. Today, with a renewed hope.

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