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The Redwood City Council approved a five-year, nearly up to $4 million contract amendment with Axon Enterprise to continue the police department’s body-worn camera program and expand its drone operations, while renewing the department’s military equipment policy.
The council voted April 13 to approve the amendment, bringing the city’s total Axon contract to about $5.9 million for body-worn cameras, drones, digital evidence storage and related technology.
The contract with Axon Enterprise includes the purchase of 11 drones, unlimited digital storage software through Evidence.com, Fusus Pro+’s real-time analysis, airspace-monitoring infrastructure, and enough body-worn cameras to replace existing devices every two years, despite their roughly three-year lifespans, according to Axon representative Kyle Panasewicz.
“I think sort of my natural disposition reflexively when I hear military equipment is not wanting that,” said Council member Isabella Chu. “However… I’ve been completely won over on this. I’ve seen it save lives.”
Before authorizing the contract with Axon — adding up to $3.7 million to the existing contract and bringing the total to roughly $5.9 million — the council reviewed the city’s Annual Military Equipment Use Report for 2025, as required by state law. The report outlined the Redwood City Police Department’s use, acquisition, training and oversight of its military equipment program. Body-worn cameras were not included because they are not classified as military.
In this report, Police Lt. Jesse Castro said “nearly all” of the city’s military equipment improves the department’s ability to de-escalate critical incidents, “typically with little or no use of force.”
The armored rescue vehicle arrived in Redwood City for use in July 2025 and was deployed twice that year, said Sgt. Jeff Boyce. One deployment was in Menlo Park to “safely approach” a vehicle where a subject was reported to be armed. In another, officers used the vehicle to help detain folks following a “high-risk situation” involving a reported firearm.
The department’s drone program became operational starting in 2025. Sgt. Jeff Boyce, who supervises it, said the department deployed drones in over 600 incidents this year, reducing alarm response time by over 75% and fight response time by 68%.
Drones, which initially cost the city “a relatively modest” nearly $125,000 for equipment and training, are used to support patrol investigations and provide real-time situational awareness, he said. Uses include disturbances, welfare checks, suspicious activity, collisions, violent property crimes, missing persons and even firework complaints.
Boyce pointed to the department’s Drone as First Responder program as essential to the speedy arrest of a man accused of at least three home break-ins in San Carlos and Redwood City, which he said saved an estimated $90,000 in personnel and overtime costs by resolving the case quickly.
According to the Annual Military Equipment Use Report for 2025, the most costly expense is the department’s contribution to the county’s multijurisdictional Special Response Team. Overtime training for that team last year cost the city nearly $250,000.
The report also included a May 2025 executive protection detail in Atherton for Vice President J.D. Vance, in which the Special Response Team was used.
The next most costly item is the police department’s new drone program, at almost $10,000 for 2025, followed by spending on rifles and shotguns.
The city began using Axon’s body-worn cameras in 2020. The existing agreement expired in December 2025, and the department has been without a contract for the last four months.
Currently, the city’s drone program includes one Drone as a First Responder that can only cover part of the city, along with several field-operated drones that require an on-scene operator, Boyce said. By increasing the number of drone docks throughout the city through this new contract with Axon, Boyce said, the department would expand coverage and expedite response times across all neighborhoods.
Only about two-thirds of the not-to-exceed $3.7 million Axon contract has been identified within the department’s existing budget at this point, leaving year three only partially funded and years four and five unfunded. This contract increases the annual cost by almost $90,000 a year for the five-year term.These new expenses come at a time when Redwood City’s February budgetary report projected annual shortfalls of up to $19.7 million beginning in fiscal year 2028-29, which is at least $6.3 million more than what was expected in June 2025.
Clara Jaeckel of the Police Advisory Committee offered public comment in opposition to the Axon contract.
“The threat that these technologies pose to people’s privacy lies in the accumulation of data to reveal more about patterns in people’s lives and actions than any individually observed incident would,” Jaeckel said. “The more types of data gathering devices you have… the greater the risk that that data will be misused.”
She noted the risks of stalking and political profiling specifically, and recent cases that show “the best written policies about public camera installations are not a full safeguard against such abuse.” She urged the council to invest its budget into services that “go to the root of residents’ needs,” such as housing, mental health support, youth programs and job development.
According to Boyce, no formal complaints related to the use of military equipment by the Redwood City police department during the reporting period were filed and the department did not identify any issues throughout its internal review.
Council members like Diane Howard, Chris Sturken and Jeff Gee inquired about the city’s body-worn camera program mechanics, to which Police Chief Kristina Bell responded that they are only used if the police department is “about to take enforcement action,” or if an officer “believes this needs to be documented.”
The data typically lives in the system for 90 days and is then purged, except in some cases, like a murder, Bell said. The county prosecutor, defense attorneys and Redwood City Police Department have access to the footage, but Boyce is the only person who can delete it.
Axon’s drone hardware Skydio X10 cannot tap into the data, Boyce said. Rather, it can only see “anonymized telemetrics” from the flight itself to analyze the performance of the actual hardware, but not the video that is recorded.
Sturken said that the council didn’t hear from the American Civil Liberties Union or other community organizations that could have added an opposing perspective. Nonetheless, he appreciated Jaeckel’s public comment and said that hiring more mental health clinicians for the Community Wellness and Crisis Response Team could be a good idea, because the team doesn’t have the staffing to respond to every reported incident, which he demonstrated.
Sturken also raised concerns with the city’s looming deficit.
“I’m a little concerned about making such a commitment right now, not knowing how we’re going to pay for it all in the next coming years,” Sturken said. “And we have a tendency to make these really large purchases, anticipating that our revenue will keep pace, and that’s just not the case.”
Mayor Elmer Martínez Saballos, Vice Mayor Kaia Eakin, Sturken and Gee called for better planning moving forward so the city readies technologically and fiscally for innovation and device lifespans, among other considerations.
Nonetheless, the council unanimously voted to renew its Military Equipment Ordinance and authorize the nearly $4 million contract with Axon.
