Sheriff’s office to receive updated body and car cameras

Upgraded body cameras and car cameras for the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office are going to improve accountability, provide protection for both deputies and suspects, give better evidence to the county attorneys and be overall a “dramatic” improvement over the current system, officials say.

The board of supervisors on April 19 approved a more than half-a-million-dollar contract to replace the current models used by sheriff’s office staff.

Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty initially proposed a five-year contract to replace cameras and tasers on April 5, but the action was postponed because a public hearing needed to be held. After speaking with command staff in the interim, the sheriff’s office decided it could get by without the tasers.

Axon Enterprise, Inc., of Scottsdale, Arizona, will be providing the sheriff’s office with 38 body cameras for deputies, reserves, jailers and civil servers for about $56,276 per year, over a five-year period. Halferty said a lot of the body camera footage seen in the news comes from the Axon-brand devices.

In addition, the sheriff’s office is also receiving 24 car cameras for about $48,672 per year, in the same five-year period. Altogether, the body cameras will cost a total of $281,384 and the car cameras will cost a total of $243,360. In total, the cameras will cost about $524,744 over the next five years.

Removing the tasers from the proposal deducted $65,000 from the original bid.

Every two-and-a-half years, county law enforcement will be provided new body cameras to replace the old models. Halferty said the cameras can take a beating. Right now the sheriff’s office is spending more than $30,000 a year trying to maintain the current system, which Halferty said is failing at times.

Lt. Brad Shutts said the new cameras operate under the same system as the Newton Police Department. They have higher quality video features, too. Shutts said the system allows the county attorney’s office to more easily access camera footage. The sheriff’s office will no longer have to burn video onto compact discs.

“They have safety features on them so they make sure they come on when they need to be on,” Shutts told the board of supervisors. “Now, it’s all manually done. The new ones will come on automatically when your lights come on and things like that. It gives you much more control.”

Ryan Eaton, information technology director for Jasper County, said the new system is cloud-based. Axon will host the cloud system. Currently, the sheriff’s office has deputies come in to the building in-person for the data to back up to the server, which is replicated to an off-site backup.

“This would eliminate that need,” Eaton said. “It automatically goes to Axon.”

Jasper County Attorney Scott Nicholson said there is an “extremely dramatic difference” between accessing the current sheriff’s office body camera footage versus the Newton Police Department’s system. Officers can now download their body camera footage to a link and then send it to the county attorney’s office.

“We spend a lot of money every year on CD burners and CDs. This will eliminate that,” Nicholson said. “We were thrilled when we found out these guys are going to go to the same system as Newton (Police Department). Then when they send it to our office, we send a link to defense attorneys … It’s a good move.”

Jasper County Supervisor Brandon Talsma agrees.

“It helps protect our deputies. It helps protect our employees. It helps Scott with his side of it. And it also doesn’t hurt accountability either,” Talsma said.

Halferty said cops are not perfect, but he assured the supervisors the cameras exonerates and justifies police actions more than it persecutes.

“If they are conducting unlawful or behavior that’s not acceptable, we deal with that, too,” Halferty said. “But it’s definitely a plus … The current system is towards the end of its life anyway. It was a good system when we first got it. But five years out, anything five years out IT-related you’re almost antiquated.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext 6560 or at cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com