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County Council approves body cameras for deputies

Cody Collins

Bartholomew County will be going forward with a plan to buy body cameras and car cameras for county deputies.

The County Council unanimously approved the plan to spend just over $308,000 dollars to provide the cameras this year. That’s after County Commissioners offered up funds that had originally been allocated for maintenance projects on the County Courthouse.

Commissioner Larry Kleinhenz said that the county has done more than $300,000 in immediately necessary maintenance on the courthouse this year, and had about $700,000 more in projects planned. But those could be deferred.

Laura DeDomenic. Photo courtesy of Laura DeDomenic.

Previously, council members had expressed concerns about the expected upcoming revenue slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic led drop in income taxes. But with the alternative funding source, County Councilwoman Laura DeDomenic made the motion to go ahead with the purchase.

Council president Matt Miller praised the commissioners for offering up the maintenance funds to make the sheriff’s department project happen.

Matt Miller. Photo courtesy of Bartholomew County.

The sheriff’s department proposed buying Axon cameras, the same used by the Columbus Police Department at a first year cost of just over $280 thousand dollars including installation. The county IT department also estimated it would need $25 thousand dollars to help implement the camera installation.

Although there had been talk of separating the body cameras from the car cameras, Capt. Brandon Slate explained that the remote internet access point installed in each deputy’s vehicle would allow footage to be uploaded in near real time while still in the field. Without that infrastructure, the deputies would have to spend 20 to 30 minutes at the end of each shift, uploading their day’s video to cloud storage. Slate estimated that they would use about 5 terabytes of bandwidth a month, with the county government having to increase its internet capacity to allow that.

Now that a funding source is secured, the sheriff’s department will now go out to seek formal bids for the project.