Gila County

In June 2026 the Gila County Board of Supervisors approved a contract for software that writes police reports. It cost $13,686.21 and it was item E.

The product is called Draft One. It is made by Axon, the company that makes Tasers and body cameras, and it turns the audio a body camera records into a draft report for a deputy to file. Six months earlier, Pima County’s Board of Supervisors had refused to buy the same thing.

The same software, two counties, two answers

Pima County has about a million residents. Its Sheriff asked the Board to extend an Axon contract to 2036 and add up to $45 million, of which roughly $18 million was for the AI products. The deputies’ union wrote to the Board against it. The Board continued the item, then removed it from the agenda and sent direction to the County Administrator instead. The vote was unanimous.

Gila County has about fifty three thousand residents. Its Chief Deputy explained that detectives spend hours turning six to ten hour interviews into reports prosecutors can use, which is a real problem and a reasonable thing to want solved. The Board approved the contract.

Nobody did anything wrong in either county. That is the part worth sitting with. The difference between the two outcomes was not that one county was careless. It was that a $45 million decision attracts a union letter, a newspaper and a public argument, and a $13,686 decision does not.

Where the money comes from

Three state and federal programs pay for law enforcement technology in this county, and the county records each one as it arrives.

In 2024 the Board approved an agreement for Local Border Support with the Arizona Department of Public Safety worth $624,241, of which $315,940 was for the license plate reader program. Gila County is roughly a hundred miles from Mexico. It is one of five Arizona counties we have found taking money from that program, and four of the five are not on the border.

The county also holds a standing agreement with the state for the GIITEM task force, which stands for Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission, running to 2027. The same program paid for body cameras in Greenlee County in 2017.

What else the Board bought

It approved $558,658.64 for upgrading the surveillance systems inside its two jails, at Globe and at Payson. Jail cameras watch people who cannot leave, and they are bought as building maintenance.

In 2024 it approved $884,671.79 more for “video surveillance services” across seven county buildings: the Central Heights Facility, the Globe Courthouse, the Copper Building, the Guerrero Building, the Payson Courthouse, the Tommie Cline Martin County Complex and the Star Valley Elections Storage Building. That contract was tabled in June, at a near identical price, and approved in August. The agendas do not say why it waited. The same company, APIC Solutions, sold Santa Cruz County its jail video system.

It approved two Axon contracts on five year terms, one for $175,204.35 covering Taser certification and one for $270,950.26 for an evidence platform.

And the Board acknowledged a grant of $8,190 from the San Carlos Apache Tribe and its gaming enterprise, awarded to the county education agency for biometric fingerprint software.

What the Board did not buy

Across seven years and 265 agendas, all of which we could read, there is no real time crime center, no cell site simulator, no facial recognition and no gunshot detection.

One absence needs a caveat. The Electronic Frontier Foundation records a camera registry at the Payson Police Department, and this Board never discussed one. Payson is a town inside this county and keeps its own council record, which we have not read. The Board’s silence is not the town’s.

Where this leaves a resident

The Board meets on the first and third Tuesday in Globe, and it publishes its agendas as web pages you can read without downloading anything. That is better access than most counties in this state offer.

What it does not publish is a public comment procedure, so if you want to be heard on an item, ring the Clerk of the Board first and ask. The meeting hub on this site has the address and the number.