The Lane County Sheriff’s Office will soon be aided by a group of 30 new patrollers – only these ones are digital, and it’s been said that they never lie.
On Wednesday, the Lane County Broad of Commissioners approved a Sheriff’s Office request to spend nearly $190,000 on 30, new in-car video camera systems called Digital Patrollers, which will be mounted in the majority of the county’s law-enforcement vehicle fleet.
“What you’re capturing on an in-car-video camera is evidence,” said Lt. Randy Smith of the Lane County Sheriff’s Office. “If you’re going to court to testify, then you have evidence that is pretty hard to argue with.”
Money to fund the Sheriff’s Office came from an $197,000 Community Orientated Policing Services technology grant issued by the U.S. Department of Justice 18 months ago.
“Over that time we had been studying the best way to spend the technology money, and we decided the in-car-video cameras are necessary components for law enforcement,” Smith said.
The COPS program provides grants to various law enforcement agencies across the nation to advance community policing, and the program awarded Oregon law enforcement more than $2.5 million in the 2006 fiscal year.
These in-car video systems provide a feeling of safety for police officers, and have also been proven to have a dramatic effect in de-escalating situations before they turn violent, according to a 2004 report.
The report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police stated that, of the surveyed officers, one in three reported the use of the cameras made them feel safer on the job. And of the participating officers, nearly half of them reported that citizens became less aggressive after learning that the event was being recorded, the report said.
The sheriff’s office has more than 40 vehicles in its fleet, and with only 30 cameras purchased, the video systems will be installed in the Traffic Team vehicles first because they have the most contact with people, Smith said.
Surveyed officers who felt safer with the systems also said they stopped more people for traffic violations when vehicles were equipped with cameras.
Oregon State Police currently uses 106 of the Digital Patroller system, half were purchased by the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association, and the other 53 by the Oregon State Police Chief’s Association. The state police have used some form of in-car video camera system since the early 1990s.
“They are tremendously helpful in different areas … and in terms of evidentiary value, they are invaluable because they capture audio and visual information,” said Oregon State Police Sgt. Ron Martin.
More than 90 percent of prosecutors surveyed in the IACP report said the use of video evidence was successful in cases, with DUIIs being the best supported cases. Also, nearly 60 percent of prosecutors reported the use of video evidence reduced the actual time they spent in court – perhaps proving that pictures are worth a thousand words.
Unlike the old analog video systems, the new video cameras send digital feed back to the police station, which allows for “archiving the information” and “allows the recordings to be admissible in court,” said Steve Gorecki, a spokesman for Motorola.
The Digital Patroller model purchased by the sheriff’s office is sold by Motorola, the company that also makes the radios and other wireless communication systems currently used by the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.
The video recorders mount on the dashboard or roof of police vehicles. An officer can manually engage the system, or when siren lights are activated, the camera is triggered to turn on and begin recording.
“It paints a picture of what clearly did and did not happen,” Martin said. “The systems are a great tool for law enforcement to have and use, and I feel much more comfortable with it in my car.”
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