$37 Million, Ten Years, One Vendor: What Cherokee County Needs to Know About the Sheriff's Axon Deal

30 minutes ago

11 min read

Cherokee County Sheriff's Office Seeks a $37 Million, Ten Year Contract With Axon

The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners was scheduled to consider a technology contract for the Sheriff's Office at its October 6, 2026 meeting. Through an amendment to the agenda, the item was removed and postponed to the October 20, 2026 meeting.

Agenda Item 12.12 asks commissioners to approve a consolidated agreement between the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office and Axon Enterprise Inc. The agreement would cover the Sheriff's Office's "existing and future public safety technology, equipment, software, licensing, support, and related services." It would run for ten years, and its total value would be $37,287,493.75. For a sense of scale, here is that that big number with all the commas means:

Think of the county's main checking account. It's called the general fund, and next year it will hold about $191 million. That money pays for the Sheriff's Office, the courts, and most of the everyday services the county provides. About two out of every three dollars in that account already goes to law enforcement and the courts. This year, departments asked for more money than the county had, so county leaders cut about $12 million from their requests. They cut about $550,000 from elections and about $330,000 from the courts. The Axon contract would cost about $3.4 million in its first year alone. That's more than six times what the county cut from elections and more than ten times what it cut from the courts. It's also more than the county is spending on all of these combined: 57 new heart monitors for its ambulances, three new emergency response vehicles, and rebuilding an ambulance. Those three purchases add up to about $3 million.

What the Agenda Says

According to the county's agenda request, the Sheriff's Office already uses several Axon products: TASER devices, body worn cameras, Fleet 3 in car camera systems, and Axon Evidence, the company's cloud platform for storing and managing digital evidence. These are currently handled through separate agreements and purchasing arrangements.

The proposal would fold all of them into one ten year contract that would replace and supersede every existing Axon contract the Sheriff's Office holds.

The staff summary gives three reasons for consolidation:

A single agreement offers a standardized contract structure, predictable annual costs, and coordinated equipment replacement.
One integrated platform supports continuity in evidence collection, storage, training, and workflows.
Switching vendors would require "substantial replacement or duplication" of equipment, software, integrations, training, and evidence infrastructure.

The third reason acknowledges that leaving Axon would already be costly. A ten year agreement would extend that dependence into the 2030s.

The Numbers

The first year cost is $3,441,563.00, beginning in FY2027. The total contract value is $37,287,493.75.

Ten years at the first year rate would come to about $34.4 million. The public summary doesn't explain the remaining $2.87 million, which could reflect annual price increases, one time costs, or both. A year by year payment schedule would answer that.

Across the full term, the cost averages about $3.73 million per year, or a little over $10,000 per day.

The agenda notes that this project is included in the Sheriff's Office FY2027 operating budget. The Board is scheduled to adopt the full FY2027 budget, totaling $531,579,309, at the October 6 meeting. The budget covers one year. The Axon agreement would commit the county, including future boards and future sheriffs, for ten.

What "Existing and Future" Could Cover

The suggested action covers existing and future technology. Axon's product line now includes much more than TASERs and body cameras:

License plate readers. Axon built automated license plate recognition into its Fleet 3 in car camera system, designed so the dashboard camera in every patrol car can read plates. When Fleet 3 launched in 2021, Axon announced a partnership with Flock Safety and said Fleet 3 and Flock data are integrated in Axon Evidence for agencies that use both. The Sheriff's Office already uses Fleet 3, according to the agenda. The public summary doesn't say whether its plate reading features are turned on.

AI report writing. Axon's Draft One uses generative AI to produce police reports from body camera audio. A July 2025 report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that in departments using Draft One, there's no way to tell which parts of a report the AI wrote and which parts the officer wrote. Police reports are often the basis for criminal charges, plea deals, and court testimony.

Drones. In 2021, Axon and the drone maker Skydio announced a partnership naming Axon the exclusive reseller of Skydio drones to public safety agencies worldwide. Skydio's integrations allow drone video to stream live into Axon's platforms and be stored with body camera footage in Axon Evidence.

Real time surveillance networks. In February 2024, Axon acquired Fusus, a Norcross, Georgia company whose platform brings live video from surveillance cameras into a single system for law enforcement. The Atlas of Surveillance, a database from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, lists the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office as a user of the Fusus camera registry.

One of the two attachments to this agenda item is titled "Product Swap_Outpost.Skydio." The public summary doesn't explain what's being swapped, what Outpost refers to, or whether this contract adds drone capability for the Sheriff's Office.

License Plate Reader Misuse in Cherokee County

This year, the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office has fired and arrested four of its own employees accused of using the agency's automated license plate reader database for non law enforcement purposes.

June 12: Deputy Cynthia Jodesty of the Uniform Patrol Division was arrested and fired. The sheriff's office said an audit showed she looked up the license plate of a fellow Sheriff's Office employee outside of any investigation. Her arrest affidavit, as reported by Atlanta News First, alleges she used the database multiple times over about a month to locate a vehicle without a legal or investigative purpose.

June 22: Two supervisors, Lt. Chris Bryant and Sgt. Mike Creeden, were arrested and fired. The sheriff's office said they violated agency policy but didn't release further details.

August 2026: Jerry Shellhouse was arrested and fired. The sheriff's office said his alleged misuse may have taken place between October 2023 and December 2025.

Each was charged with one felony count of violation of oath of office and one misdemeanor count of prohibition on law enforcement retaining license plate data. These are charges, and each person is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

The Sheriff's Office found these cases through its own audits, conducted by its Real Time Intelligence Division, and arrested the employees involved. Sheriff Frank Reynolds said the community expects the "highest level of professionalism, integrity, and accountability." The agency has since updated its policy to audit the system at least twice a year.

In the Shellhouse case, the alleged misuse went on for more than two years before it was caught, and officials haven't disclosed whose plates he searched or why. The public also hasn't been told whether anyone whose information was searched in these cases has been notified.

Cases Across Georgia

As of this summer, Atlanta News First Investigates had identified at least 20 cases in Georgia over the past year in which officers faced discipline or criminal allegations tied to improper use of Flock's license plate reader system, including accusations of tracking romantic partners and acquaintances. Some of those cases involve stalking charges:

Braselton: Former Police Chief Michael Steffman was arrested in November 2025 and charged with stalking, harassment, and license plate reader misuse. The Washington Post reported he searched his former partner's plate about 600 times.

Coffee County: A 2026 grand jury indictment charged former deputy Chris Ashley Rozar with stalking, computer invasion of privacy, misuse of license plate data, and violation of oath. Prosecutors allege he used Flock and other law enforcement databases to track a woman in 2024.

Macon: In August 2026, the Bibb County Sheriff's Office arrested three officers on charges that include stalking and violation of oath. The investigation began after Flock notified the agency of possible irregularities.

Conyers: A dispatcher supervisor in the police department's Real Time Crime Center was charged after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation alleged she accessed the Flock system more than 30 times for non law enforcement purposes between April and July 2026, including repeated searches of her domestic partner's vehicle.

Other recent Georgia cases include five former Albany police officers arrested July 6 after an internal audit, according to the GBI. A Habersham County deputy was fired and arrested over searches involving someone he had a personal relationship with. Three Fayetteville officers were fired after a new audit feature showed searches of their own plates and those of friends and family. A DeKalb County sheriff's sergeant was arrested and lost his job, and a Greene County deputy was fired and arrested after a June audit.

The Institute for Justice has found that most stalking cases involving these systems came to light when victims noticed they were being followed and went to police. Atlanta News First Investigates also found that Flock removed officer names from audit logs when outside agencies search a department's data, replacing them with anonymized ID numbers.

Georgia law allows agencies to collect plate reader data but permits access only for law enforcement purposes. Misusing that data is a misdemeanor.

How This Relates to the Axon Contract

The proposed contract would cover body cameras, in car cameras with plate reading capability, cloud evidence storage, and future technology for ten years. The agenda summary doesn't mention audits, access logs, or consequences for misuse. Given that misuse inside the Sheriff's Office went undetected for as long as two years, those safeguards should be written into the contract before any new data systems are added.

What Other Counties Did

Pima County, Arizona. On January 6, 2026, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 5 to 0 to reject a proposed Axon contract amendment. The sheriff's department had signed a ten year Axon contract in 2021 worth about $26.6 million, with five years still left on it. The amendment would have extended the relationship to 2036 and added up to $45 million in spending, including more than $18 million for Axon's AI software package, which includes Draft One.

Supervisor Jennifer Allen said Axon had approached the department first and was pushing the county to sign early in exchange for a lower price. She also raised concerns that federal agencies, many of which also contract with Axon, could seek access to county data. Under Pima's existing contract, Axon could release county data in response to a legal or governmental demand, and if the county wanted to fight that demand, it would do so at its own expense.

The largest deputies' union in the department also opposed the deal. Its president said officers still have to heavily edit AI generated reports and called the software "not worth that amount of money." Supervisor Andrés Cano explained his vote by pointing to how fast technology, policy, and risk are "changing month by month." The board asked for an analysis of the county's other Axon contracts, potential competitors, and alternative scenarios before going further.

Hays County, Texas. This year, the Hays County Sheriff's Office sought a ten year, roughly $4.5 million Axon contract built around the company's AI package. An AI report writing tool was dropped from the list after concerns from the district attorney's office. Commissioners initially voted 4 to 1 to approve funding. On September 15, 2026, a few days after a local community forum on the technology, they voted 3 to 2 to remove the funding from the budget. County Judge Ruben Becerra, the original lone no vote, credited community pressure for the change and said the money would go toward hiring more corrections officers. He questioned locking the county in for ten years "at the mercy of one company."

Baltimore, Maryland. In May 2026, Baltimore's spending board approved a no bid, ten year Axon contract worth about $153 million. A representative of a competing vendor said the city could have saved as much as $50 million by looking at alternatives. Critics noted that Baltimore's original Axon arrangement in 2016 was $11.6 million and grew over time.

In Pima and Hays, public input during the review process affected the outcome.

Questions for Commissioners Before October 20

Was this contract competitively bid? Did the county seek quotes from any other vendor or evaluate the cost of alternatives?
What does "future" technology include? Does this agreement allow the Sheriff's Office to add new Axon products, including AI tools, drones, or surveillance platforms, without returning to the Board for approval?
Does the contract include license plate reading? Are the Fleet 3 cameras' plate reader features active or included, and is any plate reader data connected to Axon Evidence?
What safeguards against misuse are built in? Does the contract require search logs that name the user, regular audits, and public reporting of audit results? What happens to an employee who misuses the system?
Will people who were tracked be notified? In the four Cherokee cases already charged, have the people whose information was searched been told?
Does the contract include Draft One or any other AI report writing feature? If so, what policies govern its use, and how will defendants and courts know which parts of a report were written by AI?
What is the "Product Swap" involving Outpost and Skydio? Is the Sheriff's Office adding drones, drone docks, or drone as first responder capability through this agreement?
Who can access Cherokee County's data? What does the contract say about requests from federal agencies, other states, or third parties? Who pays to contest them?
What happens if the county wants out? What are the termination terms, and what would it cost to leave early?
Why ten years? Would a shorter term give the county more flexibility as the technology and the law change?
What is the year by year payment schedule? What accounts for the roughly $2.87 million difference between ten years at the first year rate and the total contract value?

What You Can Do

Speak at public comment. Board of Commissioners regular meetings are held at the Cherokee County Admin Complex, 1130 Bluffs Pkwy, Canton, GA 30114. The October 6 meeting starts at 6:00 PM and includes public comment, along with adoption of the FY2027 budget. Check the October 20 agenda for the start time once it's posted.

Come to the Surveillance in Cherokee Town Hall. NGA CAN Tech Watch and DeFlock Cherokee are co hosting a town hall on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, from 7 to 9 PM at The Chambers at City Center in Woodstock. We'll discuss this contract, the license plate reader cases, and other surveillance technology in Cherokee County.

Contact your commissioner. Ask them to require the full contract terms, a competitive analysis, enforceable audit and misuse safeguards, and a clear policy on AI and data sharing before voting on any ten year agreement. Find your commissioner here: https://cherokeecountyga.gov/BOC

Read the documents yourself. The agenda item and its attachments are public: