If anyone questioned the importance of body-worn cameras for law enforcement officers, events in the national news have driven home the message that they can be crucial in determining what happened. There are a host of questions following two deadly shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in both Texas and Maine in recent weeks. And, in both cases, ICE agents’ stories differ from the witnesses’ accounts and body cameras could have provided a lot of answers as to who is telling the truth.
The cameras are important for local law enforcement as well, which is why the Guilford County Board of Commissioners is set to approve a $13.3 million, 10-year camera program for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office at the board’s Thursday, July 23 meeting.
And the contract includes a whole lot more than body-worn and in-car cameras. For one thing, the package includes 225 licenses for an Axon artificial intelligence assistant, although county documents don’t explain exactly how the Sheriff’s Office intends to use it. The deal with Axon Enterprise includes 542 body-worn cameras, camera systems for 185 Sheriff’s Office vehicles, automatic license plate reader technology, unlimited video storage, livestreaming, automatic transcription, evidence tagging and 225 licenses for an Axon artificial intelligence assistant…