What the state’s Ybor ‘community engagement’ money is buying
After the 2023 Ybor shooting, the Legislature funded a “crime prevention initiative … through community engagement.” So far it has bought TPD three drones and, on Thursday’s consent agenda, a $595,000 platform from a Palantir alum’s company that Florida agencies elsewhere are buying for immigration enforcement.
Items 12 and 13 on Thursday’s consent agenda accept $595,000 from the Office of the State Attorney so the Tampa Police Department can buy Peregrine, a “CJIS-aligned SaaS platform for public safety.” The money is the state’s Ybor City crime-prevention appropriation, and the phrase that follows it through every document is “community engagement.”
In January 2024, three months after the Halloween shooting on Seventh Avenue, the State Attorney’s Office filed a Senate funding request titled “Ybor City Crime Prevention Coalition,” sponsored by Sen. Darryl Rouson. It asked for $3,465,000 for a “task force,” administered by the State Attorney, to buy “cameras, smart lighting, Blue Light acoustic sensors, community engagement technologies, command/control and related equipment,” fund “research and data analysis,” and run “enhanced enforcement operations that target trespassing, loitering, vagrancy, underage drinking, narcotics possession and distribution.”
The Legislature funded $3 million of it as Specific Appropriation 897 in the 2024-25 budget, with this instruction: “The funds … are provided to implement a crime prevention initiative in and around Ybor City through community engagement. The State Attorney’s office may contract with local law enforcement entities or community organizations to assist with implementation.” The Legislature’s own budget summary lists the item as the “Ybor City Community Outreach and Engagement Initiative.”
Whatever the coalition was meant to be, the money sat. The unspent balance was rolled forward in the 2025 budget and again in 2026.
The first draw came this March: $500,000 to TPD for three Axon drones and docking stations for Ybor, approved on consent April 16 without discussion. The City had already spent it. Last September council approved an Axon drone-as-first-responder program priced at up to $10.1 million through FY2034, and put $500,000 of general fund money into its first purchase as “interim financing until an expected grant of $500,000 from the State Attorney’s Office is received”.
Thursday’s is the second. Both grant agreements repeat the Legislature’s wording, and every invoice TPD submits has to certify that the money was “expended only for allowable costs and services used for the purpose of implementing a crime prevention initiative in and around Ybor City through community engagement.” The agreement is written for the neighborhood. It promises “dedicated use of Peregrine technology by TPD as part of its overall public safety plan for Ybor City,” and its scope of work opens with Seventh Avenue nightlife. The resolution council votes on widens that to “Ybor City and the City of Tampa.”
This grant buys a one-year license for Peregrine’s “Core Operational Platform with Assistant Pro,” connected to TPD’s dispatch and records systems and to Axon’s Evidence.com, the cloud that holds the department’s body-camera, Taser and drone data. “Assistant” is the company’s generative AI layer, still in early access. The grant reimburses what the agreement calls the “initial cost,” and the City’s budget resolution records it as a principal payment on a software subscription, the way it accounts for multi-year contracts. Who pays after June 2027 isn’t in the supporting docs.
Peregrine is a San Francisco company founded by Nick Noone, a former Palantir executive who ran its U.S. special operations business. It raised $250 million in June at a $6.8 billion valuation, with Sequoia among its backers, and its Florida growth has come through immigration enforcement. The state’s immigration board has steered more than $16 million to two dozen agencies to buy it, the Orlando Sentinel reported, including $271,352 for Plant City police in May. The Osceola County Sheriff’s grant application says the software “facilitates immigration enforcement by sharing local data with federal agencies.”
That accounts for $1,095,000 of the $3 million the state appropriated for crime prevention through community engagement.
Two weeks ago TPD pulled 17 license plate readers after FDOT cited “surveillance schemes,” and Council Member Lynn Hurtak warned that Axon “is taking over for Flock.” The next vendor arrives Thursday on consent, through the prosecutor’s office, under the heading of community engagement.
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