I’m doing something a bit out of character tonight. I am voluntarily participating in local government. I’ve had a longstanding distaste for national politics (which started way before 2016), which stems from both moral and practical arguments, but I think local politics might be different. At the city level, everyone is a real person. We have to actually live together. One good idea can make a difference. I may end up just as disillusioned with local politics as I am national by the end of the night, but I have to at least try.
And so, I am going to offer my public comment on the proposed contract with Axon at the Covington legislative meeting in the hopes that there are a few good ideas in what I have to say that can make Covington a safe place to live without more of our civil liberties dripping away.
Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Chris Kelley. I’ve lived in Covington for two years, but I’ve been part of this community nearly my whole life — I graduated from Covington Latin School in 1990, and I’ve attended Trinity Church since the mid-1980s. Professionally, I work in cloud infrastructure, data, and AI systems at Siemens. I’m not speaking as someone who’s afraid of technology — I build it for a living. I’m speaking because I understand exactly what this contract is asking you to deploy.
This is a 10-year, roughly $6 million renewal that consolidates six existing Axon agreements and adds three genuinely new categories — mobile license-plate readers, a Skydio drone with AI-assisted “Drone as First Responder” capability, and AI-generated police report writing.
I’ll concede the point the Chief of Police has made: this technology can work. Covington’s overall crime index fell about 38% comparing the five years of the current contract (2021–2025) to the five years before it (City-Data.com, FBI UCR data). I want to be honest with you, though, the same way I’d want the department to be honest with us: that decline started well before this contract, tracks a national trend seen in cities that don’t have this technology at all, and no analysis has been presented isolating what Axon specifically contributed. Effectiveness is a real consideration. It isn’t the only one.
This contract combines cruiser-based license plate tracking with drone aerial surveillance and cloud-stored, AI-processed footage of every police interaction — a far more comprehensive tracking capacity than anything currently in place.
I know the counterargument: my smartphone already knows where I am. But there’s a difference that matters. My phone is mine. I decide whether to carry it, whether to turn location off, whether to own one at all. A government camera network and a drone flying overhead are not optional, and I don’t control the settings. When people know they might be tracked, logged, and reviewed — whether they’re driving to church, to a protest, or just home from work — it changes behavior. That’s not paranoia; it’s the well-documented chilling effect of pervasive surveillance, and it’s a cost even when no individual officer ever does anything wrong.
The Motion Regarding Axon Contract and Public Safety Technology made by the Mayor requires the Police Department to write its own auditing policy, report aggregate statistics to Commissioners and the City Manager every six months, and gives the Chief of Police sole discretion to grant himself exceptions to every restriction in the document.
This isn’t hypothetical risk. The Institute for Justice has documented dozens of cases nationwide of officers abusing license-plate databases to stalk partners and exes — one Milwaukee officer ran 179 searches on a woman he was dating; a Kansas police chief ran over 200 on his ex-girlfriend. Most of those cases were caught by the victims, not by internal department review. The exact drone Covington is buying — the Skydio X10 — was used by the LAPD to surveil a recent protest for hours before any dispersal order was even given. And Axon’s own AI report-writing tool, Draft One, has been criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation because it erases its original AI-generated draft, making it impossible to tell what an officer wrote versus what the AI wrote — which is exactly why the King County, Washington prosecutor’s office banned it outright.
The Mayor’s amendment is a genuine step forward, and I want to say that clearly. But it names no outside auditor — the department polices itself. It gives the Chief broad, self-authorizing exception power. And it says nothing about whether Covington will turn on Draft One’s draft-retention feature, which exists but is off by default. Good intentions without independent verification are still just a promise.
The original body-camera and Taser contract was signed in 2021, one-sixth the cost and half the length of this one. Drones and AI report-writing were never part of that conversation.
The time to have debated body cameras and license plate readers was 2021. We don’t have a time machine. But drones and AI-written police reports are brand new to Covington tonight — the camel’s nose is in the tent, but the whole camel isn’t in yet. This is the only chance we’ll get to set the terms before these tools become the status quo we’re told is too late to change.
I’m not asking you to leave officers and residents less safe — that need is real. I’m asking you to meet it without building a surveillance system with weak brakes. Specifically:
- Split the vote. Renew the proven pieces — body cameras, Tasers — separately from the unproven new pieces — drone and AI report-writing — instead of one all-or-nothing bundle.
- Name real, independent oversight — not just an internal department policy — as a condition of approval, not a future promise.
- Require the Draft One original-draft retention feature be turned on, not optional.
- Shorten the term. A 2–3 year initial commitment with a mandatory public review, not a 10-year lock-in on technology this new.
Thank you for your time.
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