Midland County Sheriff Scott Stephenson announced in a press release Friday that the Sheriff's Office has received two grants to assist in the purchase of new in-car and body-worn cameras to be used by road patrol deputies and correctional deputies working at the Midland County Jail.
"The current in-car camera system is over 20 years old, and is beginning to fail," Stephenson said. "The new system will integrate the in-car and body-worn cameras to capture one incident from several different vantage points."
The Sheriff's Office will purchase 66 cameras — 11 in-car cameras, 32 body cameras for correctional deputies and 23 body cameras for road deputies. The cameras will be manufactured by WatchGuard Technologies.
The goal of the Sheriff's Office is to have the new camera systems in place by late summer 2019, Stephenson said.
The first $15,000 grant came from TransCanada Charitable Foundation. A second grant from the Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority was in the amount of $35,401.
A request from the Sheriff's Office for additional funding — totaling $23,526 — was unanimously approved by the Midland County Board of Commissioners this week, with the money to be taken from the general fund surplus.
The new camera system is meant to assist in improving officer and community safety, transparency and accountability in encounters with citizens, the press release stated. The cameras will also be used in evidence collection for criminal proceedings and administrative investigations.
©2019 the Midland Daily News (Midland, Mich.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
