Investigation
AI writes the police report
2024Axon's Draft One generates police narratives from body-cam audio with an LLM. Civil-liberties groups warn it launders unreliable AI text into sworn legal records.
Individual
Rick Smith
Founder & CEO, Axon Enterprise
Est. net worth: ~$2B (public estimate, 2026)
Founder of Axon (formerly TASER), the company behind most U.S. police body cameras, the evidence.com cloud, and a growing suite of AI policing tools.
On the record
- ▸Champions AI report-writing (Draft One) and drones in policing.
- ▸Proposed Taser-equipped drones, prompting his AI ethics board to resign.
- ▸Author of 'The End of Killing.'
Companies
Incidents in their orbit
Investigation
AI ethics board resigns over Taser drones
2022After Axon announced a Taser-equipped drone concept following mass shootings, a majority of its independent AI ethics board resigned in protest.
Investigation
Trump's account bought Axon stock before ICE's $220M Taser deal
2026A federal financial-disclosure filing revealed an account in Donald Trump's name bought $1–5 million of Axon stock on February 10, 2026 — about two weeks before ICE sought roughly 17,800 Tasers in a ~$220 million solicitation. Ethics watchdogs flagged the timing; the trade was in a discretionary account managed by others, and there is no allegation that Trump directed it or knew of the coming ICE deal.
Sources
- ↳Axon's Rick Smith on the future of policing — Reuters, 2022