Sheriff recommends body-worn and in-car camera purchase; county to budget payments over five years
Loading...
Summary
Chase County discussed a five-year Axon camera program for patrol vehicles and body cameras costing about $77,458.30 over five years; the sheriff's office will include the annual payments in next budgets and continue pursuing grant funding.
Chase County commissioners heard a detailed proposal from the sheriff’s office about replacing and expanding in-car cameras and body-worn cameras. The county’s jail administrator and sheriff’s staff described a five-year financing and service package from Axon that would include camera hardware, installation, training and unlimited cloud storage under an encrypted platform.
County staff said the quote for six vehicle cameras and six body-worn cameras totaled $77,458.30 over five years, which breaks down to roughly $15,491.66 per year. The Axon financing arrangement the sheriff’s office described includes full warranty coverage, a replacement body camera at about 2.5 years and cloud storage and evidence management hosted by the vendor.
Sheriff’s staff told commissioners the department currently has “two and a half” body cameras available for a six-person department and no in-car cameras; staff said limited recording capacity has hampered documentation of incidents and court proceedings. County information-technology staff noted that hosting the raw video locally would require a substantial one-time increase to existing storage capacity (quoted during the meeting as up to $30,000), making the vendor-hosted storage an important factor in the procurement decision.
Commissioners did not take a formal vote to purchase the system at the meeting. The sheriff’s office said it would carry the first-year payment from available law-enforcement or special-fund balances and proposed to include the out-year annual payments in the sheriff’s future budgets; the sheriff’s office will continue to pursue grant funding and favored a budgeted approach rather than a single-year purchase.
County officials asked the sheriff to confirm whether grant funds secured in later years could be applied to the multi-year contract payments and asked staff to work with county finance to identify the appropriate line items for the first-year payment and for future budget planning.
