SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – Onondaga County is expected to vote on a proposal for a vendor on new body cameras for the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office. This comes after months of a request for proposal, which summed up is a pitch to vendors to place a bid if they are interested in selling their product. The county submitted the proposal and should be deciding as soon as possible, according to Chairman of the Onondaga County legislature, David Knapp.
Knapp says, “There in the very final phases of that process right now, and as I mentioned the other day, they’ll be awarding that contract, any day now.”
This process started in May of 2021 and will hopefully be able to deploy body cameras to deputies after the vote on a vender is made. Knapp says he reached out to a local supplier at the beginning of the process, to gather as much information as he could about the cameras. He says it has been a long process, but the county legislature wants to make sure it is done right.
“You know we look at this as a win for everyone…for the officers, um and the Sheriff’s Department, as well as the citizens of the community,” says Knapp.
Many community members are happy about this new safety measure being added to police officer’s uniforms and the one main concern most have is the money. Knapp says that they had a surplus in 2020, due to the pandemic and repurposed some of the funds for the body cameras. However, the overall main concern isn’t the body camera cost itself, it is the unknown costs that goes hand and hand with the body cameras.
Police officers have become a bigger part of the news in the past year. It is not only a local, but national issue for police officers to have another safety measure to help them do their job more efficiently. Knapp says that the sheriff deputies knew body cameras would be a part of their uniforms in the future and it was a matter of not if, but when.
Knapp says the vote on body cameras should be happening imminently, so for now the residents of Onondaga County and the Sheriff’s Office are waiting to see who the vendor is, so they can start ordering and getting officers trained on the new equipment.
