TAVARES, Fla. — Tavares is responding to the national demand for transparency by deciding to send out its officers with body cameras.
Lt. Jon Hall said 22 members of the Tavares Police Department recently started using the Wolfcom body cameras. That includes all patrol officers and the department’s street crimes unit.
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The cameras are clipped to the outside of the officers’ vests, ready to record.
“Now they have one more thing to remember, to turn the body cam on. And then to turn it off when they’re done,” Hall said.
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The department and city decided the $23,000 price tag for the cameras was worth the transparency they provide.
“The end result is if somebody has a question that wasn’t there for that encounter, they can go back and look at the video and see what happened,” Hall said. “I mean, it’s really that simple.”
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