Local DA eyes a 10‑year AI deal
Clackamas County’s district attorney is weighing a 10‑year, $2 million contract for new AI tools from Axon, an example of how public AI purchases are becoming long‑lived infrastructure bets. The length and scale of the proposed deal underscore that early procurement decisions can lock agencies into toolsets and governance models for years, raising the stakes for upfront policy and documentation work. That dynamic is already prompting closer scrutiny of procurement paths for public AI. (opb.org)
A county prosecutor’s office outside Portland is considering an artificial intelligence contract that would run longer than many marriages: 10 years and about $2 million with Axon, the company best known for Tasers and police body cameras. The Clackamas County Board of Commissioners put the item on its April 9, 2026 consent agenda, which usually means a vote without a public debate. (opb.org) This is not Clackamas County buying its first Axon system. In March 2023, the county approved a five-year, $650,190 purchase order for Axon Justice Premier software to store, review, and share digital evidence through May 2027. (clackamas.us) The new deal would upgrade that earlier package to Justice Premier Plus. County agenda materials say the added tier includes artificial intelligence tools for “improved evidence analysis” plus quarterly updates tied to discovery, trial preparation, and exhibits. (opb.org, clackamas.us) In a prosecutor’s office, “discovery” is the handoff of evidence to the defense. A tool that sorts video, transcripts, and files faster can save lawyers hours, but it also sits directly in the path between police evidence and a criminal case in court. (axon.com, clackamas.us) Clackamas County’s own paperwork explains why Axon has so much leverage here. The district attorney’s office told commissioners in 2023 that most of its evidence comes from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, and the sheriff was already on Axon’s system. (clackamas.us) That is how software turns into infrastructure. Once police cameras, evidence storage, prosecutor review tools, and sharing systems all come from one vendor, switching stops looking like replacing an app and starts looking like rebuilding plumbing inside a courthouse. (clackamas.us, clackamas.us) Clackamas County also appears to be leaning on a procurement path that avoids a fresh head-to-head competition. The 2023 purchase used a cooperative contract through Sourcewell, and a February 26, 2026 notice said the county intended to direct contract with Axon as a “single candidate” for Axon devices, cloud, and software services through July 2035 at an estimated $1,946,228.06. (clackamas.us, oregonbuys.gov, thebidlab.com) The caution flags are not hypothetical. Another Axon product called Draft One writes police report narratives from body camera audio, and Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that defense lawyers, civil rights groups, and prosecutors have already criticized it. (opb.org) In September 2024, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in Washington told police agencies it would not accept reports produced with artificial intelligence. Deputy Chief Daniel Clark wrote that the systems can produce hallucinations and do not track their error rates in a way prosecutors can trust. (geekwire.com, opb.org) The Electronic Frontier Foundation pushed that argument further in July 2025 after reviewing records from agencies using Draft One. The group said the product does not preserve the original artificial intelligence draft or later edited versions, which can leave judges, defense attorneys, and the public unable to tell what a computer wrote and what an officer changed. (eff.org) Clackamas County says its sheriff’s office has access to Draft One but is not using it right now. That detail matters because the district attorney’s office is still considering a long contract with the same vendor while saying little in public about what guardrails, logs, audits, or disclosure rules would govern the new tools. (opb.org) A 10-year term changes the question from “should we test this software” to “what rules are we locking in until the mid-2030s.” By the time a county finishes one of these contracts, the prosecutors, sheriffs, commissioners, and artificial intelligence models that started it may all be different. (opb.org, thebidlab.com)
