Bradley County Commission to vote on body cams

CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF)- Bradley County Commissioners are working on their new budget, and they could approve body cameras for the Sheriff’s office.

Taylor Woodruff, the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office public information officer says, “It’s something that Sheriff Lawson has been wanting for a while. He requested to the county commission a while ago to have additional funding for body cams.”

Most Bradley County Sheriff’s deputies have body cams.

This funding will allow all deputies to have them and upgrade the technology on the old ones.

Alan Terry, who has attended many protests in Cleveland, says that this is a good move to bridge the gap between deputies and the community.

Terry says, “I feel like it’s great for the simple fact for the communities safety because a lot of situations it really comes down to the officers word against somebody over the community. So, I kind of feel like it will be a huge upgrade for the community.”

The Sheriff’s office says, “Whether it’s the officer’s words or actions or the citizens words or actions once something is on video, it cannot be taken back and that’s partly why we want it and I think that it’s timely because we want all of our officers to be under that accountability from day one.”

If this budget gets passed and the Sheriff’s office receives the body cams, Sheriff Lawson plans on asking the county commission for additional funding in next years budget that would create a position for someone to manage all body cam footage.

“That person would also be responsible for distributing any video content from the body cam to public records request court evidence or such so, that’s the next step that we’ll be looking at taking should this budget get approval from the county commission,” adds Woodruff.

Bradley County commission will vote on the proposed budget July 6th.