Taser moves from stun guns to cop-cams

Who will take the Auto Taser Challenge? That was the dare Taser International laid down at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1998, and hundreds of people lined up. Taser, today the stun gun supplier to America's police, was still struggling back then, and auto theft in the US was epidemic. In a bid to diversify, Taser built a steering-wheel lock that shocked anyone who tried to remove it without a key - anti-theft technology with a touch of dark justice. The Auto Taser Challenge dared the gadget-show attendees to hold on to the activated device as it sent up a shivering blue arc of electricity. Most people released the device "in a fraction of a second," recalled Steve Tuttle, the longtime Taser spokesman who helped design the stunt. The Auto Taser won the show's innovation award and a lot of admiring press. Then it flopped - and nearly wiped out the company.

In the past two decades, Taser has tried again and again to come up with a hit to rival its namesake sidearm. New products have included stun guns that look like shotguns and fire electrified pellets; computer-monitoring apps for parents; electrified land mines; laser sights for its signature gun; and a purse-size stunner for personal use, marketed as the Lady Taser. None has made it.

Now Taser has one more chance to reinvent itself - by putting a camera on the cop. The US Department of Justice last week said it would spend $75 million over the next three years on 50,000 wearable cameras for law-enforcement agencies across the country. Taser already sells a camera, called the Axon Flex, that can be mounted on an officer's sunglasses, with video uploaded to Amazon Web Services. Last week it clinched a deal to outfit the British Transport Police with cameras. On Tuesday, it announced it would acquire MediaSolv Solutions, which provides video technology for police interview rooms, closed-circuit TV, and in-cruiser cameras.

The call for police to wear cameras on the beat was renewed last summer when 18-year-old Michael Brown, an African American, was shot and killed by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Montana. Since Ferguson, a rash of deadly encounters with the police has scarred Staten Island, New York, North Charleston, South Carolina, Tulsa, Cleveland, and Baltimore and brought the relationship between blacks and cops to a crisis.

Taser is still fighting off suits claiming that its weapons are far deadlier than it says they are. So far hundreds of lawsuits alleging wrongful death or serious injury have resulted in millions of dollars in judgments against the company, although many of the awards have been sharply reduced on appeal.

As the legal claims mounted, Taser began to develop what it called the Taser Cam, a little video recorder that attached to the muzzle of a Taser and started recording whenever the trigger was engaged. If the company and its police customers could prove how they were using the stun guns, the theory went, they could better defend themselves against allegations of misuse. The flaw, said Smith: The Taser Cam couldn't capture the 30 minutes leading up to the trigger pull. It failed.

So the company split the camera from the device. By 2012, Taser's camera project had produced the Axon Flex. Now interest in police-cams is keen-and Taser isn't the only company chasing it. Digital Ally, of Lenexa, Kansas, started selling body-mounted police cameras in 2009. Seattle-based Vievu, on the other hand, has been in the body-cam market about five years longer than Taser. Body-cams are Vievu's sole focus.

Bloomberg