A review into how brand-new Tasers valued at nearly $2 million ended up in a New Hampshire Department of Corrections warehouse without first getting approval for the purchase has determined no laws were broken.
Instead, investigators say, a series of poor internal controls combined with a lack of understanding of government procurement processes led to the delivery of nearly 200 of the weapons.
Investigators also cleared Paul Raymond, a former assistant commissioner at the state corrections department, of any criminal wrongdoing after he attended conferences organized by Axon, the weapon’s manufacturer, while negotiating the contract, and recommended a friend for an open position at the company using his state email account.
Both Raymond and Helen Hanks, who led the Department of Corrections at the time of the Taser negotiations, have since resigned. The state returned the Tasers for a full refund, without any of the weapons being put into service.
Last May, Executive Councilor John Stephen requested a review of how 192 Tasers ended up in the department’s possession despite the fact that the Executive Council, which approves most contracts above $10,000, had denied the request. The council repeatedly voted down the measure in 2024 and 2025, citing high costs and the decision to purchase Axon’s latest model Taser device, rather than a lower-cost version.
Raymond told investigators that he agreed to the company’s quote on the devices, but did not realize that it would initiate delivery of the devices. Rather, he said he thought he was just securing the bid price.
But after the Tasers were shipped, nobody at the Department of Corrections notified the Executive Council that they were already in the state’s custody.
Stephen said that the Attorney General's investigation reveals a “management failure” and was preventable.
“If a senior official in the department does not understand what requires the approval of the Governor and Council, that is a problem the commissioner can fix and that should be fixed before any contract comes before this body,” Stephen wrote in a press release Friday.
Hanks, the former corrections commissioner, had little involvement in the procurement of the Tasers, according to investigators. Instead, she assigned Raymond, her top deputy, to the project.
“In retrospect, Commissioner Hanks conceded that Mr. Raymond may have been ‘over his head’ as assistant commissioner and that NH DOC had failed to adequately prepare him for his responsibilities," investigators from the Attorney General’s office wrote.
The review concluded that neither Hanks nor Raymond violated any criminal laws, but the report left open the question of any possible ethics violations. Investigators said Raymond had developed a “friendly relationship” with Axon’s sales team, in part, by attending numerous conferences staged by the company. The review found, though, that corrections and law enforcement staff from across the country attend similar events, that Raymond had permission from Hanks, and that he followed the department’s reimbursement policies.
Investigators also found that an email Raymond wrote to his contacts at Axon in which he recommended a friend for an open position at the company’s Boston office, while also discussing the department’s purchase of equipment, “were not linked together and no quid pro quo was explicitly proposed or implied.”
Hanks led the state corrections department from 2017 through 2025, and was the first woman to ever hold that job in New Hampshire. Raymond previously worked in the Department of Safety for a decade, and helped lead communications for the state during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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