RS Rick Smith On All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

“A police union leader told me famously, he said, no cop wants to wear a body camera until they've worn one for 90 days, and then they will not go on patrol without it. Because what you don't realize, police are arresting criminals all the time. And criminals have no compunction about lying about what happened. The number of false allegations are incredible.”

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg · Money & Markets · November 2026

Context

Friedberg asked how Axon persuaded police to accept body cameras when they create liability for officers. Smith said that was exactly the early objection, then relayed what a police union leader had told him.

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Transcript

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg Around 36:08 into the episode

Rick Smith

Yeah.

David Friedberg

…body cam's on and they get themselves in trouble. And so, isn't there a bit of a liability issue? And how do you end up selling your customer on putting themselves at risk? Or do they view it as a double-edged sword that it's also for their own safety, their own protection, and for winning cases?

Rick Smith

So you are articulating the exact concern people had up front. That's why they didn't want to wear it because they had that perception. However, once actually a police union leader told me famously, he said, no cop wants to wear a body camera until they've worn one for 90 days, and then they will not go on patrol without it. Because what you don't realize, police are arresting criminals all the time. And criminals have no compunction about lying about what happened. The number of false allegations are incredible. I'm going to give you one example. I'm on a ride along with a cop in Phoenix. And this is in the early days of body cameras. And I said, How's it going? He said, Well, I didn't like this, but let me tell you what happened to me last week. I was arresting a prostitute. She was basically more than half naked. She was high on some sort of drugs. And as I put her into the patrol car, as I'm driving…

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Rick Smith

White officer, black subject. Now, Michael Brown was unarmed, but he was significantly larger than Officer Wilson. And according to Officer Wilson, they were fighting over the gun. Like the officer, you know, an officer brings a gun to every fight they get in. And once they're fighting over the…

David Friedberg

And so you get out there, the market starts moving, and I'm assuming it just becomes de facto, right? I mean, all over the country at this point. I mean, maybe you can just share a little bit about the scale of the business today.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

“I don't want to live in a world where everybody else has robotics and AI and the police are showing up in a 74 Chevy, you know, with an old radio. Like they're going to need enough tech to keep up with the rest of us. And then the laws and regulations and oversight are going to have to evolve to make sure that we are controlling the government as the people.” — Rick Smith, All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

“We send in more people with guns and they have a gunfight. Like, this is the Wild West, guys. Like, is that really the best we can do as a society? … This is a key distinction. You'll never get a cop that will take a non-lethal weapon up against somebody with a gun. But if we can send in a small drone or robot, then everything shifts.” — Rick Smith, All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg