The department finally released footage of Mr. Kinard’s death six months later, in August 2021, as part of an edited video meant to “maintain transparent communication” between the Fontana Police Department and the community by sharing officers’ body and dash cam footage. The video begins with the police department claiming that its release was “delayed based on individualized and specific safety concerns for the victim,” referring not to the man who had been killed six months prior by one of its officers, but the owner of the home that was possibly burgled, “and witnesses involved in this investigation.” 

The video continues with Chief Billy Green narrating Tuitavake’s body camera footage and providing reasons and excuses for Tuitavake’s decision to fatally shoot Mr. Kinard: Mr. Kinard’s hand was in his lap, he was holding something metallic that Tuitavake couldn’t see (a very small lighter), and Tuitavake immediately delivered medical aid (after fatally shooting an unarmed man). The video ends with Chief Green labelling the shooting a “heartbreaking tragedy that changed the lives of two families:” Mr. Kinard’s and “also that of our officer, who is a product of Fontana’s schools and churches, and now serves our community.” Officer Tuitavake was still on the force as of the video’s release. 

The Fontana Police Department’s release of an edited video containing the body camera footage of Mr. Kinard’s death is now a common move by police departments to placate communities outraged by police killings. Body cameras became ubiquitous after Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri sparked a national push for the cameras as a police accountability and transparency tool. 

Companies like Axon, the Arizona-based weapons and technology manufacturer, cleverly advertised their body cameras as a policy solution for police brutality after Ferguson. In actuality, police departments had always wanted the cameras to protect their officers, help them surveil the communities they serve, and collect evidence. Axon’s advertising just helped to bring politicians and a police brutality-weary public on board, too. And Axon made billions off of it. The body camera industry almost doubled between 2016 and 2021 and Axon dominates that market. 

Axon’s cunning advertising strategy took advantage of a moment of mass fury at policing and systems of state power and violence and funneled that public outrage into profits. As a result, body cameras have become an almost ubiquitous surveillance device that we, the public, theoretically asked for. 

However, as Mr. Kinard’s death in 2021 (seven years after body cameras were implemented in police departments) exemplifies, body cameras have not reduced police killings or reformed the underlying systems that perpetuate and justify the endless police violence against civilians. Instead, body camera footage is co-opted and used to justify police killings—just as the footage of Mr. Kinard’s death was. 

Axon’s cunning advertising strategy took advantage of a moment of mass fury at policing and systems of state power and violence and funneled that public outrage into profits.

The arc of the body camera narrative reflects what lawyer and community organizer Shakeer Rahman of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has seen over and over again: “When the system’s most fundamental premises are being threatened, that’s when you see . . . companies rushing in. . . . reformist politicians . . . and police forces and the technology industry . . . getting together to say: Here’s the solution. That’s definitely what we saw here with the body cams.”

What is Axon? 

Axon, previously Taser International, rose to prominence as the manufacturer of the Taser, a conducted electrical weapon advertised as a non-lethal alternative to guns capable of  revolutionizing police departments’ ability to end encounters and stop threats without using deadly force. It currently sells Tasers, body cameras, car dash cameras, and the computer evidence, response, and records systems that departments use to organize and analyze the data collected from these devices. 

The company describes its mission as protecting life—in fact, it advertises all of its products as saving lives, preserving the truth, or accelerating justice. The narrative it tells is clear—Axon, through its products, seeks to help officers kill fewer people, preserve the truth of encounters, and encourage transparency with communities. It has broken its impact down into numbers for the world to see, claiming that the Taser has saved 297,712 lives (in instances “justifying” lethal force where an officer chose to use a Taser instead). 

But Axon’s shiny exterior is simply the face of a company that sells the state weapons and surveillance to use against the public.

Axon’s Moonshot campaign exemplifies the company’s supposed concern for saving lives by reducing gun-related deaths between police and civilians. The company’s goal is to cut gun-related deaths in half by 2033. It claims to be rallying partners, including law enforcement, community organizers, elected officials, and other companies, around that goal. 

Axon’s advertising paints a pretty picture of a progressive technology company with the noble goal of ending police killings and promoting police accountability. But Axon’s shiny exterior is simply the face of a company that sells the state weapons and surveillance to use against the public. Axon cleverly advertised its products by using tragic accounts of police killings to grow its profits eleven-fold since Michael Brown’s death in 2014. A wolf in sheep’s clothing remains a wolf—and this wolf is making billions. 

How Body Cameras Went from Police Evidentiary Tools to a Silver Bullet Solution to Police Brutality

Axon originally marketed body cameras as tools that would protect police officers from civilian complaints, police departments from liability, and as evidence-gathering and digital surveillance mechanisms. In 2012, Axon’s CEO, Rick Smith, described the cameras as a “defensive” money-saver, intimating that body camera footage could help reduce the billions police departments pay in response to civilian complaints about brutality. 

Several pre-2014 Axon press releases describe body cameras as tools to protect and exonerate officers. Others point out the evidence-gathering value of having recordings of all police encounters with civilians. In fact, Axon’s cloud-based video recording platform was called EVIDENCE.com (now rebranded to Axon Evidence). Before 2014, Axon did not hide the ball about what benefits it thought its body cameras would give police departments—it actively advertised them to police as sophisticated evidence-gathering tools.  

After Michael Brown was killed by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, the narrative changed. After Brown’s death, the country could not agree on a solution to police violence or what kind of police reform was needed. The country also could not agree on what happened during the shooting—Wilson claimed he shot Brown in self-defense, but witnesses disputed that and called the shooting unjust. Everyone agreed that a recording of the event could have helped. In came body cameras. 

Advertised as an accountability and truth-telling tool, the body camera was meant to accomplish a whole slew of policy goals: Restore trust in policing, decrease police brutality, allow victims to get justice (without really agreeing on what justice meant), and get innocent police officers out of court. Progressive politicians and police departments alike advocated for the tool. Michael Brown’s mother, testifying in front of the Missouri legislature, asked for police-worn body cameras to be implemented so that they could provide truth and transparency. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, known for supporting the right to privacy, promoted body cameras as a “win-win.”

Backed by what seemed like almost everyone, the body camera industry boomed.  In 2014, President Barack Obama asked for $263 million in body camera and training funding as part of his plan to restore trust between communities and police ($75 million of which would go directly to outfitting police departments with body cameras), with an additional promise to purchase 50,000 body cameras for law enforcement agencies in three years. The Justice Department eventually handed out over $23 million in funding to over 70 law enforcement agencies for a body camera pilot program. 

The President of the Washington, D.C. Police Foundation claimed that body cameras would become ubiquitous in the world of policing after Ferguson. He was right. By 2016, 80% of large police departments had acquired body cameras for officers. This movement to turn body cameras into a regular feature of policing was the “largest new investment in policing in a generation” and cost millions.  

Body Cameras Help Police, Not Victims of Police Brutality

This generational investment hasn’t been all that. A recent ProPublica investigation uncovered that police have been keeping body camera footage to themselves, killing the accountability revolution in its cradle. Despite pouring millions to equip police with body cameras, policymakers failed to establish a robust control mechanism for the evidence that the cameras produced. Police departments were left to decide who could access the body camera recordings and how and if to release the recordings to the public. Departments often do not release video footage at all, even if they tout the cameras as transparency tools. For example, the NYPD often denied record requests of body camera footage, released edited videos, or falsely claimed that the footage did not exist. 

And even when the footage is released, it paints a picture very favorable to police. Alec Karakatsanis, founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps, notes that body camera footage is often shot from the officer’s chest. The outward-facing, lower angle and police movement and jostling of the camera makes the footage appear chaotic. “The perspective makes everything feel more urgent and more rushed.” 

These chaotic videos make it easier to conclude that the police had no choice but to use force in the way they did. A New York Times article makes this point by comparing footage recorded by a body camera against that recorded by a bystander—in each of the comparisons, the body camera footage looks more chaotic and threatening than the bystander video. When determining whether or not an officer’s use of force was reasonable, chaotic body camera videos taken from an officer’s perspective will color the court’s interpretation of the event in favor of the officer. When we view video from someone’s perspective, “we tend to adopt an interpretation that favors that person,” a phenomenon known as “camera perspective bias.” 

Some departments take advantage of this bias to use body camera video in a different way—as propaganda. Shakeer Rahman notes that, after shootings, the LAPD releases body camera footage as a highly edited, narrated, carefully produced video (just as the Fontana PD did with Mr. Kinard’s death). The videos, he says, are often misleadingly edited, leaving out key moments in favor of the most favorable views. It’s not disclosure—it’s propaganda. 

Further, body cameras have not accomplished the policy goals of adjusting police behavior or leading to more accountability. A 2019 study in Criminology & Public Policy reviewed body camera literature and found that the use of body cameras did not have any statistically significant effects on officer behavior or citizen opinion of police. A Department of Justice review admitted that “[r]esearch does not necessarily support the effectiveness of body-worn cameras in achieving those desired outcomes.” 

Some departments take advantage of this bias to use body camera video in a different way—as propaganda.

Nor have body cameras had any noticeable change on the total number of people killed by police—since their explosion in 2016, deaths by police have only risen. Even after George Floyd was murdered in 2020, police killings consistently rose. According to the data, body camera “accountability and transparency” have not affected the number of people the police kill.

Graph created by author, data sourced from Mapping Police Violence.

And yet, the government and law enforcement agencies continue to pour millions into this ineffective solution. In 2023, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (housed under the Justice Department) awarded 52 grants totaling over $20 million to local governments, housing authorities, and school districts under its “Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program to Support Law Enforcement Agencies.” The same program awarded $20 million to 35 law enforcement agencies in 2022.

Axon Manipulated a Police Brutality-Weary Public by Advertising Body Cameras as the Solution to Police Accountability and Transparency Issues

While the public was reeling from the death of Michael Brown, Axon stepped in to market body cameras as a technology that would record civilian-police interactions, making it easier to hold police accountable and increase police department transparency with the public. 

A different spokesperson for Axon called Michael Brown’s death at the hands of police a “massive awareness campaign” for body cameras.

At the time, Rick Smith framed the problem as a distrust between communities and police and said that “[Axon] believe[s] wearable technology — like body-worn cameras—is the future for communities to relate to those entrusted to protect them.” He described Michael Brown’s death as a tipping point for the “concept of using wearable cameras to provide a foundation of transparency.”  This was the same man, who, just two years ago, had described body cameras as a way to help reduce the amount police departments had to pay to settle civilian complaints about police brutality. Axon had changed its narrative. 

A different spokesperson for Axon called Michael Brown’s death at the hands of police a “massive awareness campaign” for body cameras. The spokesperson acknowledged that Axon’s body cameras were not a panacea, but that they were “about as close as you can get right now.” 

This was Axon tapping into America’s desire for an easy solution to the issue of racist and deadly policing. Seth Stoughton, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina claims that the country has a draw to quick, easy fixes—he calls it “silver-bullet syndrome.” Axon, it seems, knew what the country was thinking. 

Investors also seemed to sense that Axon’s tides were turning, as Axon’s stock almost doubled in the four months after the shooting, to its highest point in years. In an earnings call just two months after the shooting, the company’s CEO, Rick Smith, said that Axon was feeling phenomenal. 

Axon dominates the body camera market right now. It made $1.56 billion last year and expects to make between $1.88 and $1.94 billion this year. It controls the majority of the body camera market (with its closest competitor being Motorola), a market which is projected to grow to $7 billion by 2026. It’s total addressable market (meaning the revenue opportunity for a particular product) is a whopping $65 billion. As of 2022, it sells products to over 95% of state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States. Axon’s marketing strategy was a major part of its success, but so were its relationships with law enforcement and government and its lobbying efforts. 

Axon cultivated relationships with police department and local government personnel. The company covered airfare and hotels for law enforcement personnel who spoke at Axon’s promotional conferences and hired recently retired chiefs as consultants (sometimes very soon after the company sold the chief’s police department its products). Axon has offered chiefs gifts. It paid the Memphis mayor’s campaign manager $800,000 at the same time it signed a $9.4 million body camera contract with the city. A lawsuit filed by a competitor outlined over 10 cities whose body camera contracts were directed by government officials who were financially tied to Axon. Some of Axon’s relationships with officials prompted investigations to ensure that ethics laws had not been violated. The company’s close relationship to police chiefs and other government officials is worrying and implicates Axon’s capture of all sorts of law enforcement agencies and municipal governments.

Axon also spends millions on lobbying the federal government. Axon more than doubled its lobbying efforts (in terms of dollars spent) between 2019 and 2020, likely in response to George Floyd’s murder and the renewed interest in police accountability and transparency that his death and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests sparked. And since then, Axon has only spent more and more.

Last year, the company spent about $1.4 million (about double what it spent in 2022) to lobby for various bills that proposed pouring more money into purchasing body cameras for law enforcement agencies. For example, much of the company’s lobbying energy went into the Law Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act. Axon’s lobbyists advocated for the bill to include funding for body cameras and the accompanying evidence management tools. The company also lobbied for such funding to be included in the National Defense Authorization Act, Homeland Security appropriations, and Defense appropriations.  

Behind all of this activity is the knowledge that body cameras are not working in the way that Axon advertises. Axon’s moonshot campaign acknowledged that police killings have risen in the past six years, years in which its cameras have been on the market and used by many agencies and departments.  It had contracts with the Minneapolis Police Department (which employed George Floyd’s killer) and the Louisville Police Department (which employed Breonna Taylor’s killer) before the events of 2020. The world found out about George Floyd through video captured by Darnella Frazier, a witness to his death, not police body camera video.  In Breonna Taylor’s case, the cops involved either were not wearing their body cameras at the time or did not turn them on. The inconclusive research regarding the effects of using body cameras is also publicly available. 

And yet, Axon continues to advertise itself as a “force for good.” In a statement in response to George Floyd’s killing in 2020, Rick Smith made a moving promise: To build technology that “helps eradicate racism and excessive force in the justice system.” In its 2023 report, the company congratulated itself on “usher[ing] in greater potential for a less-lethal future,” “expanding Axon’s connected ecosystem to help save lives,” and “[m]aking the right things easier and the wrong things harder” through product development. 

Axon is all-in on its branding strategy as a company that protects life. But it is, at its core, a weapons and law enforcement technology company. And its eyes are turning to the next great frontier of body cameras: expanding the surveillance state.  

Body Cameras Strengthen the Surveillance State

In addition to not delivering on its promise of transparency and accountability for police, the body camera actually increases the power of the state to surveil poor communities and communities of color. Tying body cameras to police accountability has provided them a veneer of legitimacy.  Where before, the public would have balked at body cameras’ ability to surveil us, now, we think of them as protecting us from police violence. We pour more money into this technology, which is then used to invade our privacy and collect evidence against us.

Body camera footage is evidence and has been used as such in the prosecution of private citizens, not just police officers. According to a 2016 study from George Mason University, nearly all (92.6%) prosecutors’ offices in jurisdictions that use body cameras used the evidence to prosecute citizens. According to the same study, almost two-thirds of prosecutors believed that body camera footage would be more helpful to prosecutors than the defense and “would improve prosecutor’s overall ability to prosecute cases.” Axon actively advertises its evidence platform to prosecutors as a way to simplify evidence sharing with law enforcement. 

The body camera actually increases the power of the state to surveil poor communities and communities of color.

Body cameras are ubiquitous and mobile surveillance devices that record all sorts of public and private activity (including faces), which is then stored for years. Police enter and investigate private spaces often in response to calls. When they do so, their body cameras pick up video and audio of citizens engaging in private, domestic activity. Police also record the public spaces they routinely patrol (which are most often communities of color). This data is all collected and stored in places like Axon’s digital evidence management systems indefinitely. This footage can then be “algorithmically analyzed, converted into metadata, and stored in searchable databases.” 

The rise of AI (which Axon is currently incorporating into the package of services it offers) and facial recognition technology dramatically increases the state’s surveillance capabilities. Perhaps sensing the amount of money to be made in making state surveillance easier, Axon recently acquired Fusus, an AI surveillance company whose product brings private and public security camera footage into one live feed. This footage can come from doorbell cameras, drones, fixed private security cameras, helicopters, police body cameras, and cameras in schools or churches. The product then adds AI to the cameras and allows them to detect vehicles, clothing, objects, and people. Axon’s body cameras and drones are already capable of feeding into this system. As these systems sell for $25,000 to $100,00 per year, Axon is set to make a pretty penny off of this acquisition. 

Why is this increased surveillance a problem? Beyond the fact that our taxpayer dollars would be making Axon shareholders even more money, handing the government millions to buy body cameras that will then contribute to Nineteen Eighty-Four levels of mass surveillance is terrible for our civil rights. Mass surveillance can chill free speech and constitutionally protected civil activity, such as protest. Surveillance can put people on watchlists, subject them to additional (and dangerous) encounters with law enforcement, and may lead to increased prosecution. It grants the state a great amount of power over its citizenry and can amplify the reach of government discrimination in enforcement. Government surveillance is also racist—communities of color are already overpoliced and over-surveilled and improving the technology that watches all of us will only lead to worse outcomes for already over-criminalized groups. 

But, at least it will continue to fill Axon’s coffers. 

What comes next? 

When America was struggling to come to terms with the broad range of issues that contributed to Michael Brown’s death in 2014, Axon (and its excellent marketing team) swept in and both defined and solved the problem for us. The problem? Lack of police accountability and transparency is leading to police killings. The solution? Body cameras. But clearly, Axon’s solution is only working to make its shareholders fabulously wealthy. It isn’t working for us. 

So how do we fix the actual problem? First, we have to realize that Axon and its body cameras are only a symptom, not the real problem. As Shakeer Rahman noted, when revolution threatens the system’s fundamental premises, those in power come together to present a solution that doesn’t actually solve the problem—it only grants them greater power. 

The solution presented in response to American anger regarding police killings was the body camera. However, the problem ran deeper than the fact that civilian encounters with police were not recorded, and getting rid of body cameras is not going to solve the deeper issue (though it would certainly put the brakes on our rapidly expanding state surveillance system). 

This takes us to step two: Identifying and understanding the problem. If we pull back the smokescreen of discussions around transparency and recording police interactions, we find the deeper problem: police are routinely killing people and those people are disproportionately Black. This problem is systemic and understanding it, much less solving it, requires tackling a whole host of uncomfortable questions: Why are police more present in Black and Brown neighborhoods?; Why is America so concerned with punishment rather than offering roads to rehabilitation?; Why is police use of violence against citizens legitimized to the point that murdering an unarmed teenager might be considered a “reasonable” reaction?; Who are police really protecting? These questions are not easy to answer. They require America to turn inward and reckon with the history of policing, the impact of race and wealth on law enforcement goals, and what the goal of law enforcement should be. 

Finally, we hit step three: Solving the problem. Overhauling policing in America is not an easy task. Luckily, there are many brilliant community organizers, advocates, and reformers who have plenty of ideas that tackle different failures of our law enforcement apparatus—those of us who care about long-term social change should follow their lead. Implementing these changes will take time and patience. There will be setbacks. But even a little more justice is well worth that effort. 

And a final word of advice: If some company offers to solve the problem in exchange for a few million dollars, remember to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.