Portage County commissioners agree to purchase body cameras for sheriff's Office

The Portage County Sheriff's Office may soon get body cameras for its deputies after county commissioners agreed Thursday to move forward with funding.

Portage County commissioners said they recently learned that no state grant dollars will be available to purchase them until 2023. Joe Harris, the county's director of budget and financial management, agreed to return to commissioners next week with more detailed numbers on the cost of the cameras and where the funding would come from.

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County Administrator Michelle Crombie said that although there are grant sources available for body cameras, none are open to apply for until fall. If the county were to get the grant, the dollars then would not be released for funding until January at the earliest.

She estimated that the cost of outfitting all deputies with cameras at between $400,000 and $500,000.

Commissioner Sabrina Christian-Bennett said the county shouldn't delay the purchase of the cameras any longer.

"We need to move forward with this," she said. "$400,000 to $500,000 seems like a lot, but not if we get sued."

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Shortly after taking office, Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski made the case for $2.9 million in additional funding for facility and equipment upgrades. At the time, the sheriff said body cameras were needed to protect officers from false accusations and lawsuits.

But a year and a half later, the cameras still haven't been ordered, despite three shootings involving Portage County deputies since 2021, two of them fatal. In the first two shootings, the deputes involved were cleared of wrongdoing.

The third shooting, which took place in May and claimed the life of a Windham woman, remains under investigation.

Harris suggested some of the money could come from a line item previously allocated toward the county's phone bill.

Previously, Chief Deputy Ralph Spidalieri told commissioners the department was paying hundreds of thousands more than it should on its phone bill because the county was being penalized for not upgrading its technology. That problem has been fixed, Harris said, and there's about $300,000 left in that line item.

Commissioners suggested taking the rest of the money from the county's general fund, or from remaining dollars in the Sales and Use tax fund. The tax expired at the end of 2020.

Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at 330-298-1139 or dsmith@recordpub.com. 

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Portage commissioners to move ahead with body cameras for deputies