Lowndes County supervisors have authorized the sheriff’s office to apply for a grant that would fund purchasing new audio/video systems for up to 35 patrol cars.
According to Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Marc Miley, deputy patrol cars are currently equipped with video systems that can capture audio from no more than 50 feet away. Research into systems with higher quality audio capabilities yielded one result: Watchguard Video, whose systems have the capacity to capture audio from up to two miles away from the car, he told supervisors Monday.
Miley said LCSO has already met with the company’s grant administrator, who told him the grant will pay for all the systems as long as the department fronts the cost to install them. Miley said he would like to install the video/audio systems in up to 35 patrol cars. The cost for one unit is about $4,750, meaning if LCSO’s application is accepted, approximately $166,250 in funding. Installation of each system would be about $150, Miley said, but LCSO has enough funding to budget that amount for each car.
“(Watchguard Video is) the sole source provider for this particular type of video … If an officer gets into a foot pursuit or something goes on in the inside of a house or inside of a business or something like that, it is recorded. When he gets back into the car, he’s got a backup with the video in the car,” Miley said. “Another thing about this video in these cars is it will go back up to six days. If somebody calls and says something happened at this stop sign three days ago, I should be able to go to that car, get into the DVR system in that car, pull it up and know exactly the time frame to look at.
Miley said the investment could potentially save LCSO up to 20 percent in liability insurance.
“It’s an officer safety thing,” he said. “We’ve had some instances here lately that I wish we had video on or audio on to go back and listen and hear some things.”
County IT Administrator Kevin Forrester said the durability of the systems is another feature that would help deputies better perform their duties.
“If we were to go into a home and domestic violence is happening and there’s a lot of things going on, once you reach past 50 feet of that car, you have no audio. Other agencies wear digital recorders on their lapels and they have to worry about all the downloading and did it record or not,'” Forrester said. “I know for a fact because of me purchasing them in the past. We were looking at about $9,000 just in portable audio recorders and you were having to replace them about every few months because of tussles on the ground or something like that. These are totally rugged-ized units.”
Miley said it’s not guaranteed LCSO will be accepted for grant funding, as call and population amounts are key statistics considered, but the Watchguard grant administrator should be able to present reasons to various federal entities for rewarding the grant. If that happens, Miley said he hopes to have the recorder units installed and operating in patrol cars by the end of the year.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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