Milan police begin using body cameras
MILAN, Tenn. — New technology is making its way into one West Tennessee police department, and officials said it could answer questions about what happens on calls. Body cameras have been showing up a lot lately after there have been more questions than answers in officer-involved shootings all over the country. Officials in Milan are hoping equipping their officers with cameras will prevent that. “It’s pretty simple and it takes good video,” Patrolman Brian Hutson with the Milan Police Department said. “We get a little remote, and it fits on our belt.” The department received 17 cameras in mid December, one for each of their officers. “If they’re dealing with a potentially violent person, they don’t even have to take their eyes off that person,” Chief Bobby Sellers said. “They just reach down and activate the camera with the remote.” Sellers said the cameras are part of his officers’ uniform, going with them everywhere they go. He said their main purpose is to see what happened on a call. “If that person is doing a field sobriety test, it allows the judge and the prosecutors to see that,” Sellers said. Whenever an officer arrives on the scene of a call, they start recording, according to Sellers. It captures their entire conversation in high definition so if anything happens they can go back and watch it later. “There’s no questions asked — on what could happen or what did happen, or what was said or what could have been said,” Hutson said. After officer-involved shootings in Ferguson and Berkeley, Mo., where officers were not wearing body cameras, sellers said he hopes if something like that happened in his city the video would tell the whole story. “A lot of the stories there were proven to be untrue,” Sellers said. “Had that officer had a body camera on, it may have shed a lot of light on what happened that day.” Sellers also said they have a body camera for their school resource officer. All 17 cameras were paid for by a $40,000 grant.
