Hays County votes against law enforcement technology contract

HAYS COUNTY, Texas - Hays County was looking at a 10-year contract with a law enforcement technology company, but that changed on Tuesday.

The deal appeared to be moving forward, but one vote ultimately changed the plan. Now, the contract is completely off the table.

Hays County law enforcement tech contract

The backstory:

The Hays County Sheriff’s Office already uses Axon technology for body cameras and in dash cameras.

Sheriff Anthony Hipolito says the department wanted to expand that partnership with Axon by adding AI to help his team.

"The Axon AI package that we were trying to purchase for the budget encompasses, I don't know, 16, 17, 18 different AI products that would allow our deputies on the street, our investigators and the offices that are working cases to be much more effective," said Hays County Sheriff Anthony Hipolito.

The list of capabilities it wished to implement included automatically transcribing recorded conversations.

"It would actually transcribe real-time certain conversations through our body cameras, through our fleet cameras. If we were looking for a specific piece of evidence or a specific quote within a body footage, we could essentially type in, look for the word help, and it would actually comb through hours and hours of footage and allow us to pull that within seconds," said Sheriff Hipolito.

Instant translation between languages was another thing the department wanted to use the AI tool for.

"That makes those conversations much more efficient, where we're not having to wait for a deputy to come over to speak Spanish, or we don't have to call the language line and hope to find someone who speaks Russian," said Sheriff Hipolito.

Other proposed tools included identifying people on video, pulling information from driver's licenses, organizing evidence and searching for license plates, among others.

Hays County judge votes against contract

The other side:

An AI report writing tool was scrapped from the list after concerns from the DA's office.

"The more I learned about it, the more I understood and realized how much a constitutional violation of a technology it is and the risk and the fraud and the access that international organizations will have and the hunting of people and even law enforcement individuals," said Hays County Judge, Ruben Becerra.

Commissioners approved the first payment of the $4.5 million contract earlier this month. But Tuesday, they voted 3-2 to remove the funding from the final budget, reversing their previous 4-1 vote.

"I was the lone no vote, but with the community support and the pressure that was applied through community engagement, when they realized I was alone, the commission voted. According to what the community wanted," said Becerra.

Judge Becerra says the vote came just days after a forum was held locally revealing concerns about the technology. He says the money that would have gone to the AI contract will now be used to get more correction officers.

"We need to stay vigilant, and we need to stay in the groove of what's going on, because there's no way a 10-year contract of any kind is good or smart. But one with AI, give me a break. I mean, this thing is evolving every week. How would we, and why would we lock ourselves down for 10 years at the mercy of one company?" said Becerra.

What they're saying:

FOX 7 reached out to Axon for comment but have not heard back.