The Powder River County Sheriff’s Office has undergone a few changes over the last few weeks. Officers now sport body cameras, which time has become an integral part of the American law enforcement officer’s kit. Body cameras, when used properly, have been used to keep officers safe from prosecution when there are claims of abuse or illegal arrest, and they’ve also been used to keep the public safe, as footage of an improper stop or arrest may be seen in court. The cameras have not been without controversy – body camera video footage has sparked public outrage in numerous instances, while also vindicating officer decisions in other instances.
Sheriff Allen Drane, Jr. commented on the new cameras: “In modern law enforcement, video footage is essential for court cases. The more options we have to protect our officers, the county, and people in general, the better we are as a department.”
The cameras used by the PR Sheriff’s Department are manufactured by Axon, and feature a unit on the officer’s chest, and a camera on the officer’s shoulder, which records the information. Drane says the shoulder mounted units do a better job of seeing just what the officer is seeing, as the units solely on the chest are often obstructed by whatever the officer is doing with his hands.
Information held by the cameras is held in cloud storage, and when the officer activates the system, say during a traffic stop, that information is backed up, to be looked at later.
Drane mentioned that the cameras came free through Axon when his department purchased the cloud storage.
These Axon cameras are not the cameras made famous recently when the NYPD had a camera start of fire – those were made by Vievu.
In other news, the Sheriff’s Department recently had to start locking their front door. The reasoning behind this change is due to Federal rules regarding the Criminal Justice Information system, which is part of the dispatch office. These centers are supposed to be in a secure area per the rules, and the door locks are the best way to currently handle this situation, per Sheriff Drane.
For now, visitors to the Sheriff’s Office need to come to the window outside the dispatch office, and ask to be let in, or to call the office, at 436-2333. In the near future, the dispatcher will be able to buzz the person in without leaving their desk, but for now someone has to manually let the person through the door.
Sheriff Drane has applied for a grant for funds which will be used to make the dispatch center a secure area, and if those funds come through in May, the office will be re-arranged and a more suitable long term setup will be put into place, complete with bulletproof glass for the dispatch office. Drane said that while bulletproof glass may seem overkill, there have been dispatch centers shot up in the past.
On Monday, the Sheriff’s Department helped to close area roads – a semi wreck near the Hammond Divide closed Hwy 212 for portions of the morning, until it was cleared. Icy roads and blowing snow also closed Hwy 59 from Broadus to the Wyoming line on Monday.
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