LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins will have a new view on the actions of his deputies.
Every deputy on the street and inside the jail will get a body-worn camera.
During a news conference Monday afternoon, Higgins and his two chief deputies announced the purchase of an Axon camera system that will provide body-worn cameras and cameras in patrol cars.
Higgins said a small percentage of jails around the country have implemented a body-worn camera system.
“It pleases me,” Chief Deputy Chuck Hendricks, who oversees the Pulaski County Regional Detention Center, said, ”to know that we are the largest county detention facility within the state, and we hope to set the trend for other detention facilities across the state that believe in the need for cameras within their facilities, as well.”
Higgins says it makes perfect sense that jailers would have body-cameras because they interact with community members just the same as a deputy would while on patrol. “And I think it’s going to help us have a safer environment within our facility,” he added, “to not only evaluate the actions of our deputies that work here, but also the people who are housed here.”
A federal grant provided $440,000 toward the $1.2 million price of the camera system. The purchase includes 121 cameras for the patrol cars. The cars already had dash-mounted cameras, but they will also get cameras facing the back seat to monitor when a deputy has someone in custody.
The cars will also have a wireless transmitting system to automatically feed any recorded footage back to the Sheriff’s Office’s servers. All 235 deputies will also get cameras to attach to their uniforms. They start recording any time a deputy grabs their handgun or stun gun, if their car exceeds 80 miles per hour, or during other moments when a deputy might not think to turn their camera on manually.
The cameras can also help show what led a deputy to reach for a weapon or caused a car crash.
“They’re always on,” Higgins explained, “but they’re set for a—when you activate, when you turn your blue lights on, things like that—it will record a certain period before that.
“If one deputy’s car is activated and another deputy comes up and their body camera is not on, within a certain range, that camera will also come on.”
Deputies say they are confident in the new cameras because they have already used them during high-stakes situations. Higgins had deputies test a couple of different systems over the summer. They were wearing the Axon cameras on July 4th when there was a fireworks war in College Station and several people got hurt.
“You know, the deputies were excited to have them,’ Higgins said of the testing process. “A lot of them said it’s time.”
Higgins said he made a camera system one of the biggest budget priorities as soon as he was elected in November 2018. He mentioned that sheriffs typically request new patrol cars during the end of a year, but he chose to redirect that money this year toward cameras.
“I think it’s unacceptable, in 2019, that we do not have this technology available,” he stated, “not only to our deputies but also to the citizens of Pulaski County.”
Higgins said he expects all the cameras to be in use, both on the street and inside the county jail, by the end of November.
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