Syracuse lawmakers and local activists clashed Monday in an unusually chaotic voting session regarding a contract with Axon Enterprise for new police surveillance technology. The common council voted unanimously to approve a contract with Axon for license plate readers, and councilors plan to so on vote on related legislation to shift from the city’s current license plate reader vendor, Flock Safety. About two dozen activists representing the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and supporting advocacy groups flooded the council chambers for the council’s afternoon voting session. The residents had come to protest the council’s vote on a contract between Axon and Syracuse Police Department, part of local lawmakers’ plan to pivot away from Flock Safety after that company repeatedly misled Syracuse officials about contract terms and data privacy. That five-year Axon contract stipulates that Syracuse will pay $422,636.28 for twenty-six license plate readers. Axon is providing the first year of its services free of charge, according to the council agenda.  When Councilor Jimmy Monto introduced the Axon contract for a vote, the activists stood up and began imploring the councilors to reconsider their plan to pivot to Axon for license plate readers.  Monto requested time from Paniagua to address the activists. “This council has been through months of discussion, going over the contract that we will be entering into Axon,” Monto said. “We are very comfortable with the idea that it is highly and easily revocable should they step out of bounds in any way inside of that contract.” Monto also guaranteed the demonstrators that the council will move forward on two agenda items aimed at terminating Flock Safety’s access to Syracuse streets, explaining that the council only held those items to ensure the city did not experience a gap of service before Axon’s license plate reader contract takes effect on March 1. The activists responded to Monto with an uproar. Council President Rita Paniagua then tried to regain order. “We’re going to respect this process, if you can’t be in the room, you will be removed, so please sit down. At this point, we’re not going to engage in any conversation, please.” Paniagua said. “Please sit down, because otherwise, we’re going to have you removed.” Beneath the din, the councilors quickly voted unanimously to approve the agreement with Axon.  Various demonstrators began hurling questions, accusations and barbs at the councilors. As most of the councilors sat quietly and appeared to be waiting for the rabble to die down, Paniagua’s secretary Erick Adame began engaging some of the more vocal demonstrators, repeatedly telling them, “You’re too late.” Some councilors sought to engage the activists, assuring them that they could have conversations after the meeting. But rather than easing tensions, those attempts to make peace appeared to escalate an already chaotic moment. Unsure how to proceed, Paniagua looked to City clerk Katy McBride for direction. The city clerk is tasked with reading the roll call of each vote after councilors introduce agenda items. “We just keep going,” McBride told Paniaugua with a smile. But the council was not able to keep going, as the activists continued to disrupt the meeting.  McBride then instructed Paniaugua to adjourn the meeting. When the council reconvened the meeting ten minutes later, demonstrators continued to voice their thoughts. Five Syracuse Police Department officers physically removed demonstrators from the council chambers, as others yelled, “freedom of speech!” The officers released the two demonstrators on City Hall’s second floor.  One of the activists, Andiara Travis, said she doesn’t trust the city’s legislative process, given that the same process resulted in the Flock Safety data exposures that prompted a pivot to the Axon contract in the first place. Pointing to massive data breaches at other major technology corporations like Google and Meta, Travis said she has no trust in the data security Syracuse lawmakers are promising exists in the new Axon contract. “We just had stupid, freaking DOGE come in and accessing every single one of our social security information, for God knows what,” Travis said. “So no, I don’t trust any of these people with our information at all, because I’m not stupid.” Travis referenced the short-lived, so-called federal Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by controversial technology tycoon Elon Musk. While that agency was nominally created to reduce government bloat, recent reporting has identified Musk and DOGE appear to have illegally harvested sensitive data on all Americans. During and after the demonstration, Paniagua and councilors invoked the council’s process. The council since November has considered various legislative items relating to license plate readers, has discussed the topic during bi-weekly study sessions and on Friday hosted a public safety committee meeting centered around the Axon contract. But Genevieve Garcia Kendrick, a co-chair of the Syracuse’s DSA chapter’s International Solidarity Committee, said the council was misunderstanding the activists — and misleading others in attendance about the demonstrators’ engagement with the council’s process. “I don’t think that they fully understood how angry and fearful and defiant that Syracuse residents are right now against these decisions that they’re making so flippantly, and I don’t think they understood that the reason why we were here was to defy the process, because they haven’t been transparent with us,” Kendrick said. Kendrick and her fellow demonstrators in January submitted a resolution proposal to the common council which, if passed, would block the city from renewing contracts with companies facilitating or profiting from President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown. The resolution’s supporters named both Flock and Axon as problematic companies that the group wanted the city to cut ties with. The coalition of advocates pushing for “melt the contract” resolution listed a January deadline for when the group expected to see the resolution appear on the council’s agenda. After that deadline passed, the group pledged on social media to pack the council’s voting session in protest of the Axon license plate reader contract. Since proposing the resolution, the advocates have been contacting councilors with thoughts and concerns through letters and one-one-one meetings with councilors, Kendrick said.  “I want to be very clear that we did actually follow the process. A lot of us have been in conversation with councilors, one on one,” Kendrick said. “We’re here because we followed the process up to this point, and you haven’t been transparent about where you’re at in the conversations about these resolutions and Axon.” Councilor Chol Majok, who was not present for the Monday voting session, told Central Current at the end of January that the “melt” resolution could still appear on the council’s agenda but may require more behind-the-scenes collaboration and compromise. While acknowledging the demonstrators’ concerns about connections to ICE and other federal agencies conducting deportation operations, Monto sought to reassure the activists in attendance that he and his peers shared their concerns.  “We have been very cautious and we have been very careful and we will continue to be very careful with technology in this city, especially surveillance technology, so thank you for being here and having your voices heard,” Monto said. 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