WEST PALM BEACH, FL– Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw announced that after years of waiting, the Palm Beach County Sherriff’s office is finally receiving body cameras.
Sheriff Bradshaw made the announcement this week stating that deputies will be wearing the cameras by the end of February.
“These cameras will be the best around, and they’re going to do something most cameras don’t do,” Bradshaw said. “We wanted to have our cameras capable of live-time streaming. So, if something’s not going the way it should, the supervisors out there are watching it in real time, and they can say, ‘Time out, everybody hold what they’re doing. We’re going to do something different.'”
The department first announced that they wanted body cameras just after 2020 but the negotiations took years to finalize due to the costs:
“It been a long process,” he said. “We’ve been doing this, it’s been going on for 2 1/2 to three years.”
“We’re not afraid of cameras, but I didn’t have an extra $20 million hanging around,” Bradshaw continued.
The Palm Beach County Commission approved a budget in September of 2022 that allowed the sheriff’s department to allocate resources to purchase the equipment they needed.
Once the equipment is received, each deputy will undergo an eight-hour training session on how to operate both the body cameras and the dash camera.
All uniformed personnel will be equipped with a camera, while supervisors will be able to tune in at any point in the day.