The Adair County Sheriff’s Office will soon get new dash and body cameras. The purchase was approved by the board of supervisors Wednesday, May 29.
The equipment the sheriff’s office has now is six years old and isn’t supported with updates anymore. Additionally, every company selling new equipment now mandates that storage be saved in the cloud.
Chief Deputy Michael Algreen is the one Sheriff Jeff Vandewater tasked with investigating possible vendors, and they’ve chosen one. Because of long transports that officers make, both dash and body cameras that are up to date are essential.
The total cost is $85,546.80 — $66,438 going to dash cameras and $19,108 to body cameras.
A five-year contract gives new dash and body cameras initially, then new body cameras half way into the period and new body and dash cameras at the fifth year, plus unlimited cloud storage. Essentially, that adds up to 18 body cams and 12 dash cams, plus any associated installation or support during the five years.
Sheriff Jeff Vandewater said that although this wasn’t planned in this year’s budget, there is enough wiggle room in his budget for him to still “give back” a portion of his budget at the end of the year, even while making this purchase. Coupling that with anticipated tighter budgeting in the future, Vandewater asked for the equipment now.
Tornado effects
Other equipment the sheriff’s office has fared remarkably well in the EF-4 tornado that struck Greenfield May 21.
Due to many factors — one being that the hospital, which is unusable now, produces the jail’s meals — inmates held in Adair County have been taken to Dallas County in the interim.
“Really, our jail numbers are low. I don’t see too many increased costs due to the tornado,” Vandewater said. “I’m sure there will be some that come up, but not anything huge.”
Vandewater said there’s some roof damage to the building that may need repaired further, as a tremendous amount of debris may have impacted the roof when the tornado passed less than a half block away. One of the facility’s seven rooftop air conditioning units was probably destroyed.
The tower at Adair County Secondary Roads concerns Vandewater and will likely need checked. A structural inspection drone was flying around the tower to make sure it is safe for climbers to go up and fix whatever needs fixed.
“The radios continued to work, which was great. That tower links to the Madison County state tower and a Corning tower. The Corning link went down, but because of the redundancy, it maintained the signal with Madison and kept things up and running,” Vandewater said. “We would’ve been in dire straits without radios.”
One deputy’s cruiser was badly damaged at the hospital because they were there with an inmate.