The agreement renews and expands Durham’s contract with Axon Enterprises Inc., which has provided body-worn cameras, Tasers and in-car cameras to the Durham Police Department since 2019. Supporters framed the contract as a tool to solve violent crime and speed justice, while opponents warned it could open a back door to expanded surveillance.
Councilman Nate Baker cast the lone no vote. The contract adds
- 100 additional in-car cameras — to give full vehicle fleet coverage
- Six “drone as first responder” units — to provide fast aeriel visibility on 911 calls
- Axon Fususa — platform that unifies live video feeds and officer GPS locations onto a single map
- Auto-transcriptions — to instantly convert audio evidence into text
- Virtual-reality Taser training — to simulate realistic de-escalation scenarios
- Unlimited device and third-party data storage — hosted on Axon’s secure cloud
Supporters argued that debates over technology ignore the life-altering, day-to-day realities of violent crime concentrated in Durham’s Black and brown neighborhoods.
Fears of surveillance vs. community trauma
Several residents urged the City Council to redirect the $16 million to youth programs, housing and violence prevention.
Damon Williams, a resident, described the inclusion of surveillance drones and the Fusus platform as “truly heinous,” adding that using artificial intelligence to catalog the public with “racist predictive policing.”
“It’s not the brand we’re concerned with,” Williams said. “It’s that we reject the use of our money for any platform supporting any real-time crime center at all.”
Brian Fox, another resident, raised concern that under the contract, public data would be housed on servers owned by a third-party corporation.
“That means you and I would be spied on by a private corporate entity with no off switch and no real accountability until it is way too late,” he said, calling this “our worst science fiction dystopias come to life.”
Supporters, meanwhile, kept the focus on gun violence and pressed council members to give investigators and officers more tools.
Floyd McKissick, the president of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, said Axon “needs to be expanded.”
“Artificial intelligence is out there,” he said. “What we need to do is make sure that that technology that has the capacity to reduce crime, to reduce violence, and to hold those accountable for their conduct is utilized. We can’t be afraid of it.”
Councilwoman Shanetta Burris framed her vote around a direct confrontation with community trauma, recalling a drive-by shooting scene she visited on East Main Street where a 21-year-old mother was shot in front of her two young children.
“We have people who want their children playing in the parks, but [there are] also kids in our community who can’t play in their front yards,” she said. “I’ve seen videos of folks carrying assault rifles through some of our communities.”
A raw fight over fear
Residents and council members questioned the contract’s data storage, the use of AI, license plate readers and who would have access to Fusus.
Fusus is marketed by Axon as a cloud-based platform that can aggregate and unify public and private security feeds. Police staff sought to distinguish it from a “real-time crime center,” describing it instead as a tool to pull together video feeds and improve situational awareness during incidents.
“The data is only criminal justice data,” said Christopher Bushek, with the police department’s information technology team.
When asked about AI and predictive policing, Bushek said the “only AI” in the proposal is auto-transcription, which he likened to closed captioning, to help create searchable transcripts for cases.
Mayor Leo Williams sharply criticized what he saw as minimizing the community’s most immediate reality.
“There are people who are dying on a daily basis,” he said. “This is not a freaking joke ... We’re talking about a life and death matter here.”
Williams added that police are increasingly encountering high-powered weapons such as machine guns and military-grade guns, and AK-47s. Interim Police Chief Walter Tate said police do not always have the same level of firepower as some of the weapons recovered at crime scenes.
On Thursday, Tate will present the first quarter crime report of the year. City documents show violent crime for the first quarter was up 4.6% compared to the same time last year. There have been 13 homicides in the city this year.
“I don’t want to discount what I’ve heard tonight, but I do want to say that it takes everything,” he said. “There are people who have lost their children, and we’re trying to make sure we have the resources to combat this.”
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