Edinburgh technology firm to equip French police in major deal

A Scottish technology firm has won a £12.6 million deal to supply 30,000 body-worn cameras for French police officers.

Edesix, which is owned by US giant Motorola Solutions has secured the contract from the French government to equip its national police force and the Gendarmerie military police.

The deal represents one of the largest rollouts of body-worn cameras in the world and shipments are due to start in July.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Jack Molloy, an executive vice president at MotorolaSolutions, said video technology plays a vital role in maintaining safety and integrity in dealings between police and the community.

Edesix's body-worn cameras are used to record interactions between police officers and the public.Edesix's body-worn cameras are used to record interactions between police officers and the public.
Edesix's body-worn cameras are used to record interactions between police officers and the public.

"This partnership follows a number of significant body-worn camera deployments. After a rigorous testing and competitive process, our solutions ranked superior in performance, usability and the ability to seamlessly integrate into the workflows of France's frontline police.”

Edesix’s VB400 battery-powered camera is able to provide 12 hours of recording, longer than the usual police shift.

The deal also includes accessories such as helmet cameras for motorcycle officers to capture high-definition footage even when riding at high-speed.

Edesix has also developed technology which automatically activates a recording and live-streams body-worn camera footage if an officer draws their weapon.

Its cameras upload recorded video directly onto a platform with footage organised using time, date and location, together with incident data added by officers.

Molloy said the French contract win follows a number of others worldwide with clients including London Ambulance Service, Metro Nashville Police and the Romanian National Police. The firm’s customers in Scotland include ScotRail and Police Scotland.

Edesix was founded in 2002 and was acquired by California-based Vigilant Solutions in 2018 and Vigilant was bought by Motorola Solutions in 2019.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

First quarter results announced by Motorola Solutions earlier this week showed sales rose by 7 per cent to $1.8 billion (£1.29bn). It’s order backlog rose to $11.3bn, up 8 per cent on a year ago.

Greg Brown, chairman and chief executive of Motorola Solutions, highlighted video security as one of the product areas which had helped the group achieve the record figures.

“This strong demand combined with our ending backlog position is driving our increased expectations for the full year,” he said.

A message from the Editor:Thank you for reading this article. We’re more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers. If you haven’t already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription: www.scotsman.com/subscriptions

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.