Axon Announces Intent to Partner with Washington State University to Further Ground Breaking Research on Police-Community Interactions

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. and PULLMAN, Wash., June 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- At the annual Axon Accelerate User Conference, Axon (Nasdaq: AAXN), the global leader in connected law enforcement technologies, and Washington State University (WSU) announced their intent to form a strategic partnership for further research that may improve law enforcement training and police-community relations. In a set of landmark studies published in 2017, researchers at WSU's new Complex Social Interaction (CSI) laboratory have analyzed body-worn camera footage to gain a more thorough and complete understanding of police use of force and police-community interaction. To aid the CSI team in their ongoing research, Axon will provide the researchers with body-worn cameras and access to its digital evidence management solution, Evidence.com, free of charge. The donated technology will allow researchers to generate their own research footage via cadets enrolled in WSU's Police Corps program and analyze it along with other data that local agencies choose to share with them. This partnership will provide them with the necessary tools and information for WSU to develop new algorithms for understanding use of force videos.

While statistics relating to police use of force have long been collected and made available to the public, the information provided by those statistics has been limited, indicating only whether use of force occurred and the type of force used. Led by Dr. David Makin, assistant professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at WSU, the CSI lab uses advanced scientific tools and techniques such as data analytics, biometrics and machine learning to examine the complex factors that shape interactions between police and community members. By examining data from body-worn cameras, the team can contextualize use of force, such as how quickly it occurs, the severity and duration.

By working with local law enforcement agencies, CSI researchers have demonstrated the type of insights that can be derived when body-worn camera footage is sequenced and subjected to these analyses. This represents a promising first step toward fully leveraging body-worn camera (BWC) technology, not only for improved safety and accountability, but also for actionable insights about the nature of police work. Thanks to its partnership with Axon, the CSI lab will undertake a range of experiments that explore the situational and dynamic factors associated with police decision-making and the efficacy of police training. In the future, this research may help public safety agencies identify areas for improvement in their training, policies and protocols and ultimately improve police-community relations.

"The research that David Makin and his team are doing at WSU is groundbreaking," said Axon CEO and founder Rick Smith. "We believe that it represents another exciting avenue for body-worn camera usage, potentially leading to the development of tools that will make BWC footage more useful for training and for understanding patterns of behavior. Our core mission is to protect life, which means protecting officers and citizens alike, so we're thrilled to support researchers like those at CSI who obviously share that mission," Smith said. 

"This cutting-edge research and technology will have real-world applications for improving organizations and decision-making at the individual level," Makin said. "Our goal is to help public safety agencies improve police-community relations, reduce conflict, cost and liability, and enhance the health and well-being of law officers and their communities."

"This is an excellent example of a win-win public-private partnership with the potential to generate cost savings for police departments and bring new products to the market," added Brian Kraft, director of Business Development for WSU's College of Arts and Sciences and director of Innovation and Industrial Research Engagement for the Office of Research.

Bryce J. Dietrich, assistant professor of Social Science Informatics at the University of Iowa, commented further on the partnership saying, "As one of the most recent hires of the Iowa Informatics Initiative, I am excited to work with Axon and the rest of the CSI team at Washington State University to help better understand how data from body-worn cameras can be used to improve officer and public safety."

About the CSI lab at WSU

Led by Dr. David Makin, an expert in police technology and training, the interdisciplinary, intercollegiate CSI research team is the first to explore police officer decision-making and interpersonal interaction by examining data from body-worn cameras. The lab has already analyzed more than 2,000 police-community interactions and numerous other records from actual policing incidents to identify, code and catalog key variables associated with a range of outcomes. Location, lighting, time of day, number of people present, gender, race, verbal and physical stress, and intensity of the interaction are among the myriad of contextual factors researchers have been able to assess. This ground-breaking approach combines automated and manual coding that will generate more objective and holistic descriptions of police-community interactions than provided by other existing methods.

Co-principal investigator and member of the CSI team, Rachel Bailey, will deploy multiple metrics from interdisciplinary lenses in order to understand more accurately how officers are interacting with different publics in circumstances that are sometimes very stressful. Bailey is an assistant professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication and director of the Communication Emotion and Cognition Laboratory at WSU.

Other faculty and graduate students on the research team include Dale Willits, assistant professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at WSU, and Bryce J. Dietrich, assistant professor of Social Science Informatics at the University of Iowa.

The first-of-its kind CSI lab is funded by a $50,000 WSU Grand Challenges Seed Grant aimed at advancing social justice and promoting an informed and equitable society. Further support comes from a National Institute of Justice grant awarded to WSU researchers to study the effects of legalized marijuana on law enforcement and crime in America.

About Axon

The Axon network is a network of devices, apps and people that help law enforcement become smarter and safer. Our mission is to protect life. Our technologies give law enforcement the confidence, focus and time they need to keep their communities safe. Our products impact every aspect of an officer's day-to-day experience:

• In the field - Our Smart Weapons offer a less-lethal intermediate use of force response and our body-worn and in-car cameras collect video evidence to capture the truth of an incident; and our mobile applications enable simple evidence collection.
• At the station - Our secure, cloud-based digital evidence management solution allows officers and command staff to manage, review, share and process digital evidence using forensic, redaction, transcription, and other tools.
• In the courtroom - Our solutions for prosecutors make collaborating across jurisdictions and agencies easy so that cases can be resolved quickly.

We work hard for those who put themselves in harm's way for all of us. To date, there are more than 100,000 licensed users from around the world and more than 184,000 lives and countless dollars have been saved with the Axon network of devices, apps and people. Learn more at www.axon.com or by calling (800) 978-2737.

Axon, the "Axon Delta" logo, Axon network, Smart Weapons, and Evidence.com are trademarks of Axon Enterprise, Inc., some of which are registered in the U.S. and other countries. For more information, visit www.axon.com/legal. All rights reserved.

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LINKS:
Complex Social Interactions Laboratory https://labs.wsu.edu/csi/
Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology https://crmj.wsu.edu/
College of Arts & Sciences https://cas.wsu.edu
WSU Grand Challenges https://research.wsu.edu/research-initiatives/opportunity-equity/
Office of Research https://research.wsu.edu/

CONTACT:
Sydney Siegmeth
VP of Global Communications
[email protected]  

David Makin
Assistant professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology
[email protected]
509-335-2455

Adriana Aumen
Communications for College of Arts & Sciences
[email protected]
509-335-5671

SOURCE Axon