This meeting of the Cedar Rapids City Council will come to order.

Welcome to the Cedar Rapids City Council meeting for Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026.

Councilmember Marty Hager is absent.

The mayor is in Washington, DC with city staff talking with our federal representatives.

I'd like to welcome our acting city manager or city clerk or city attorney.

Thank you to city staff attending and for being available by phone or email to answer questions that citizens may have.

Please turn off any cell phones or other electronic devices that might interrupt this meeting.

Please note that city council meeting agendas, minutes, and videos are available on the city's website.

Regular sessions are also available to watch live and replay through Facebook Live.

We'll start with an invocation.

Councilmember Ann Poe will give the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim.

Dear God, when loud words filled with anger, hate, cynicism, disingenuousness, and pettiness fill our minds and take away hope and joy, and replaces it with despair, doubt, and discouragement.

Let your words, God, sustain, transform, and renew us with kindness, respect, and compassion.

Let us acknowledge the opportunity at this moment not to lose faith in each other, but find it again.

God, remind us to take time to see each other.

There are no enemies here.

Let us all hold close the values of integrity, honesty, and honor that make us worthy of being your heavenly servants through the communion of love.

During this time, dear God of Juneteenth and Pride Month.

Let us celebrate our diversity and uniqueness as part of our human experience, not as a weapon to divide us, but rather to embrace the compassion you have given us for our differences.

Let us welcome with an open heart any challenges before us to find acceptance and love through those differences, being mindful and worthy of the importance of your grace.

We ask God that you bless and hold close fire chief Greg Smith as he enjoys the next chapter of his life in his retirement, and he carries with him the blessings of a grateful community and council for his service.

We pray and thank you, God, for your blessings as this council and city team work every day for your people.

Amen.

First item we have on the agenda is a presentation on Axon, Chief Dostel and Captain Doyle.

You are in order for your presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council.

Since being appointed to this position in 2024, one of my goals has been to establish a real-time information center.

Technology and public safety is advancing every day.

Typically, with law enforcement, we lag behind in keeping up with the technology.

This initiative allows us to incorporate the systems we already utilize while improving the technology, efficiency, and interoperability.

This will provide for a citywide increase in overall public safety, officer safety, crime reduction, and crime prevention.

With that being said, I would like to now turn this uh presentation over to Captain Doug Doyle.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Directors, for allowing us to present to you this uh Axon Technology Package.

It's uh a partnership between not just uh the police department, but also um other city departments as well, including fire and animal control, and then also incorporates other divisions within there through some of these systems that we're gonna we're gonna present today.

So, as part of this package, it's it incorporates a lot of the items that we already utilize.

So when we're talking about body cameras, talking about fleet cameras, uh we're talking about drones, we're talking about uh other technologies.

It's just an enhancement on that technology itself.

So when we talk about the drones, we already do a patrol deployable drones, but the project we're talking about today as part of this package is drones as first responders.

It's important to understand that drones as first responders is not just a system that is just in a flag above our city, but it's one that's responding directly to calls for service.

It's not a surveillance tool, it's just meant strictly for we get a call for service to be able to respond quickly and get eyes on that scene for not only for officer safety but also for citizen safety as well, and to make sure that we have the appropriate response to those uh to those calls for service, and with this package, there's also an additional technology package, including AI features that uh that we'll speak of.

Uh, it's important to understand that this is an investment into uh meeting city city council goals as well.

So when we're talking about fostering a safe community, a clean community, so we're talking about keeping our city uh clean, reducing crime, and improving our officer response.

But we're also talking about transparency and accountability.

So every tool within the Axon system is uh the axon ecosystem is a fully auditable system.

So every little click inside the system is tracked, but then also the data that's presented from it.

So any data that we incorporate, whether it be through the body cameras through the drones or any other system within here is owned and operated by the CRASP police department.

So nobody, no exterior uh entities have access to any of these systems at all unless given privilege by the CRASP police department.

And then as we spoke of uh as I spoke of just a little bit ago, it's multi-departmental.

So we don't look at this just as a system built for the CRASP police department, but it's also built for fire for uh animal control and other entities within the department.

So if we think of natural disasters, the ability to address that and look at that from an environmental standpoint from above and give faster response from all city departments, and it also goes beyond that of just law enforcement.

So if you look at the the ability to incorporate our schools and our campuses through through, you know, a better response to you know, high high-risk situations.

So, if we can incorporate any type of camera systems that they may uh have and want to share with us, we could bridge that gap and be able to have more appropriate response to whatever situations reported within there.

But then also local businesses, the same same thing.

If we think about our downtown district or any other area within our city, having the opportunity to make sure that we have an appropriate response to whatever system or whatever complaints they have, and then bring them into the loop as well to make them part of the solution in being uh you know addressing the issues that they're having within their neighborhoods and their areas, and then from a neighborhood standpoint, having a transparency portal that presents the uh drone flights, gives you the flight paths, gives you that, presents information on all of the systems that we're looking at operating, but then goes above and beyond as well when we talk about use of force data, traffic stop data or any of that, being able to incorporate all this data into one portal where the the city can access it.

And then from a financial standpoint, uh there's not many systems that can state that the payments within this are gonna be the same throughout the entire 10 years of the contract.

So there is no increased cost based on some of the uh the technology we get.

There's not a three percent increase each year.