Tampa Police, Sheriff's Office Get Approval For Body Cams

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FL — The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office will become the second sheriff's office in Tampa Bay to be equipped with full-time body cameras for its deputies.

The Hillsborough County Commission voted 6-1 Wednesday to fund body cams for deputies with Commissioner Stacy White voting against the measure. White said he had concerns about the cost of the equipment and privacy rights.

In February 2015, the Pasco Sheriff's Office was the first sheriff's office in central Florida to adopt a full-scale body camera program. The Pasco sheriff issued a body-worn camera to every deputy on patrol in the county.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco purchased the Taser Axon cameras for $400,000 using funds forfeited in criminal cases. He believes the cameras have increased transparency and safety for his deputies. He said his office also uses them as a learning tool so deputies can review their actions.

Besides the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, the Gulfport Police Department is the only Tampa Bay law enforcement agency to adopt the use of body cams.

The Hillsborough County Commission's decision to fund body cams for deputies comes a week after the Tampa City Council approved spending nearly $1 million to purchase 650 body cameras for Tampa Police officers. Tampa Police currently have 60 cameras and Chief Brian Dugan was planning to ask the council to fund 650 more during this year's budget cycle. The department has 900 police officers.

However, the line item was taken off the table due to unexpected city expenses related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent nationwide protests concerning police brutality prompted the city council to reconsider.

"Having a body camera should be like wearing a seat belt when you're in the car. It's for everybody's safety," Councilman Guido Maniscalco said.

The city council approved spending $952,000 for the body cameras. Dugan hopes to offset the expense with a federal grant he applied for from the Department of Justice.

Each camera costs a little less than $1,000. The major expense is the video data storage fees.

“The landscaping of policing has changed dramatically in the last five days,” Dugan told the council, referring to the protests in Tampa. “And if there’s a police officer in the city of Tampa that does not want a body-worn camera, then I suggest that you turn your badge in because we cannot have that anymore. It has changed."

While body cameras won't build instant trust between police and the community, Dugan believes the transparency will help build the community's confidence.

"They don’t trust us, and we’ve got to fix that," Dugan said.

In his appeal to the Hillsborough County Commission Wednesday, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said body cameras would provide transparency and improve community relations.

The sheriff's office put out a request for proposals from vendors last summer to begin a testing phase for various body-worn cameras that would be activated when a deputy's gun is drawn. However, he never launched the pilot program.

He told commissioners that the death of George Floyd and the subsequent civil unrest in Tampa in which two of his deputies were injured has given him a new perspective.

“I think there’s an outcry by our public to be even more transparent,” he said. "We want to embrace any tool that will help us do our jobs, protect our personnel, and provide a sense of security and openness to the public in order to maintain the trust we have worked hard to build. I believe body-worn cameras will help achieve that mission."

Additionally, he said his own deputies have asked for body cameras to protect themselves against false accusations of excessive force.

He said research shows use-of-force complaints against deputies decrease when they're wearing body cameras.

“I know that some may find this hard to believe, but our deputies are calling for this as well,” he said.

Chronister said the body cameras will record “each call for service and daily work-related interactions between deputies and the public they serve.”

“The transparency is vitally, vitally important,” agreed county commission chairman Les Miller.

Chronister estimates the cost of equipping his deputies with body cameras at $14 million including hiring three full-time employees responsible for logging in and storing the video and handling public records requests. The sheriff's office has more than 2,000 deputies on the street and working in its detention department.

White, however, wasn't sure if the expense is worth the relatively few incidents involving sheriff's deputies that have been called into question.

“I’m sensitive to what’s going on across the country but cell phone footage has been able to document and memorialize these horrendous acts that have gone on around this country,” White said. “We don’t seem to really have had problems with documenting that incredibly small number of bad apples in law enforcement.”

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