When the city of Seattle contacted Fusus, one of the nation’s leading police surveillance tech companies, in 2023, a company exec did more than just send over a brochure — he offered to connect Seattle with a “peer” in Atlanta’s police department who was familiar with the company’s products.
Seattle was hoping that Fusus’s Connect system — which ties together license plate readers, public cameras, and privately owned cameras into a single surveillance platform — could help them combat retail theft. The next year, after a Seattle Police Department project manager visited Atlanta to see the system in action, Fusus sealed the deal: Seattle signed a contract for “Connect Seattle” at an estimated price tag of $1.8 million.
But what Gross-Shader and the rest of her colleagues in Seattle didn’t know — until The Intercept called with questions — was that Freeman was wearing two hats the whole time they were talking: The APD official was not only a consultant for Fusus, he was also a board member and owner of a small share of the company that could be worth millions.
An Intercept investigation, based on public documents and a City of Atlanta ethics investigation, has found that Freeman didn’t disclose his role with Fusus in conversations with at least 14 other cities during a period spanning at least two years, and at least nine of those cities went on to make or amend millions of dollars worth of contracts with Axon Fusus — the company’s name since Axon, the company behind the Taser and a major vendor of bodyworn cameras and other police surveillance systems, purchased Fusus last year.