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In 2024, Boston recorded its fewest homicides since 1957, according to city data. Progress at that scale is rarely attributable to any single factor. It reflects something broader: the compounding effect of people, institutions, and information working in closer alignment than before.
A new generation of connected public safety technology has been built, not to replace the professionals doing this work, but to give the entire chain, from the first call to the final case record, the coherence it has long lacked.
More than 80 percent of 911 calls in the United States today originate from mobile devices, while the majority of dispatch centers still operate on infrastructure designed for landlines. That structural mismatch carries real consequences. According to the 2025 Pulse of 911 Survey, conducted by Carbyne in partnership with the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), 86 percent of emergency communications centers report experiencing high call volumes at least once per week, and 72 percent are managing as many as 10 staffing vacancies at any given time.
The average dispatcher handles close to 2,400 calls per month. The technology supporting them has, until recently, lagged significantly behind the demands placed on it. A 2024 federal review characterized the need to modernize emergency communications infrastructure as urgent.
Through modernized emergency communications platforms, the quality and speed of information available at the moment of a call has changed materially. When a caller connects with a 911 center operating on next-generation infrastructure, their precise location may be confirmed before the conversation begins. With a single tap, callers can share live video directly to the dispatcher’s screen. AI transcribes the call in real time, surfacing critical keywords and translating across more than 70 languages without placing the caller on hold or routing them to a secondary line.
Non-emergency calls can be handled by AI-powered agents, preserving 911 lines for situations requiring immediate human response. As the call is dispatched, that same intelligence travels with the responding officer, providing situational context before they arrive on scene. The first two minutes of a 911 call, consistently identified as among the most consequential in shaping outcomes, now carry a level of structured intelligence they historically could not.
Axon 911, built through the acquisitions of Prepared and Carbyne, is the platform delivering this capability. Prepared is currently deployed across more than 1,000 emergency communications centers in 49 states, serving approximately 100 million people. Carbyne provides the cloud-native infrastructure backbone, engineered for 99.999 percent uptime and designed to remain operational through network outages, cyberattacks, and mass casualty events.
Drone as First Responder programs represent one of the most significant operational shifts in field response in recent years. In agencies where these programs are active, a drone may reach a scene and begin streaming live aerial video to dispatch within approximately 90 seconds of a call, before a responding officer can physically arrive. Dispatchers, field officers, and command staff view the same feed simultaneously, enabling coordinated decision-making from the moment an incident becomes visible.
Agencies that have deployed these programs report resolving a meaningful share of calls without officer dispatch, directing resources more precisely to situations that require a direct human response. Among the developments enabling this capability at the officer level, Axon Body 4 allows an officer in the field to silently request drone support directly from their body-worn camera, summoning aerial overwatch to their exact GPS location without a radio transmission and without diverting attention from the situation in front of them.
Consider what happens when a crime occurs on a block with dozens of privately owned security cameras. In the past, an investigator would spend days knocking on doors, explaining the situation, and hoping someone still had usable footage that hadn’t been overwritten. Today, a geo-targeted digital request can reach every eligible resident and business in the relevant area within minutes, while still maintaining the privacy of all individuals. A Ring camera owner receives a notification in the app they already use. They review it, decide whether their footage is relevant, and share it securely with a few taps, or they ignore it entirely, and the agency is none the wiser. No pressure, no obligation, no privacy compromise. Any footage that is shared flows directly into the investigative record with a complete chain of custody. That shift, from manual canvassing measured in days to digital outreach measured in minutes, changes the economics of investigation without changing the principle. Participation is always voluntary, and privacy is always respected. Requests are specific, time-bound, and publicly logged. The community member is in control of the decision at every step.
The same logic applies at a broader scale. Organized retail crime costs US businesses more than $130 billion annually, according to the National Retail Federation, and it rarely stays contained to a single store or a single city. When retailers can securely share incident data with investigators through a shared platform, an isolated event becomes visible as part of a larger pattern. Cases that would have gone cold individually become solvable collectively.
In 2024, Axon formalized its Responsible Innovation Framework, establishing a repeatable, structured approach to product development grounded in three principles: ethically grounded, inclusive by design, and accountable by default. The Ethics and Equity Advisory Council, an independent body established in 2022, brings together community leaders, restorative justice advocates, educators, and academic researchers from the United States and United Kingdom to provide input that shapes the product during early development.
Axon’s approach to artificial intelligence reflects the same framework. AI-enabled tools are designed to enhance the capabilities of public safety professionals, not to substitute for their judgment. Agencies retain ownership and control of all data collected through Axon devices. Axon publishes an annual Responsible Innovation Report documenting the council’s work and the company’s progress against its stated commitments, making that record publicly available.
When an incident concludes, every element of the response, including the 911 call audio, AI-generated transcript, drone footage, body camera video from responding officers, and dispatch log, flows automatically into Axon Evidence. The result is a complete, unbroken evidentiary chain maintained from the moment someone called for help through the final resolution of the case. No reconstruction from memory. No data lost in transfer between siloed systems.
AI-powered tools, including Brief One within Axon Evidence, are designed to surface key moments across hours of footage in significantly less time than manual review, reducing investigative backlogs and accelerating the path from incident to case closure. Early adopters of connected workflows report measurable reductions in officer report-writing time, with some agencies citing reductions of approximately 50 percent through AI-assisted drafting tools.
Protecting life, in Axon’s view, is not only the objective of the technology. It is the standard by which every decision about how to build it is made.
To learn more about Axon’s Responsible Innovation Framework and connected public safety ecosystem, visit axon.com/responsible-innovation.
