Kershaw Co. Sheriff’s Office Deploys Body Cameras
July 6, 2015
Finally, all Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office uniformed deputies who work in an enforcement capacity are wearing Taser Axon body cameras. Effective July 2, 2015 the final training session in the use of body cameras was conducted and the last group of uniformed patrol officers was equipped with the new cameras.
Recently the SC General Assembly passed legislation requiring body cameras for law enforcement, but the deployment of those cameras will not take place until funding is provided by the State. However, Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews began exploring the use of this technology over three years ago and began the process of testing and evaluating different brands.
The KCSO decided to go with the Taser Axon body camera, total cost of cameras and one year data storage at about $50,000.00. Due in part to the reduction in gas prices, the Sheriff’s Office was able to fund the purchase of these cameras without asking for a budget increase from Kershaw County Council. Annual data storage costs for the 45 cameras that were purchased will run an estimated $11,000.00 annually.
At the present time 40 cameras have been deployed with few, if any, glitches in their use. The main problem has been for the deputies to remember to turn them on as well as off when their public contact has concluded.
“So far there has been very little resistance on the part of the deputies to use these cameras. It helped that, during the first week of body cam use, an irate citizen’s complaints were proven false and she decided not to file a complaint when she was told there was body cam footage of the incident,” said Sheriff Jim Matthews. “She basically lied about a deputy’s actions during an incident and we challenged her on her account of the events. Any skepticism on the part of our officers about these cameras vanished when they learned of this situation.”
Statistics from across the nation have shown that the use of body cameras generally makes everyone, the officer and the citizen, act more reasonably. In a vast majority of cases, officers are exonerated by video footage taken by their body or dash cameras when there is a complaint of some type of misconduct. Body cameras can also record details of a scene or situation that the deputy might not observe real time, but can be observed after review of the video.
