A deputy will put the images on CDs manually and a third-shift sheriff’s sergeant will pick them up daily along with some reports. New Carlisle deputies went through body camera training on Thursday, officials said.
City Council members voted unanimously in April to increase the internet speed for 30 days. The upgrade caused the city to go from paying about $80 per month to about $250 per month with Time Warner Cable to increase its bandwidth to allow deputies to download and transfer videos from the cameras.
Bridge said officials were allowed to cancel the upgrade and return to their previous internet package.
Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said officials had hoped New Carlisle could work with Time Warner Cable on the issue, but the city would have to spend thousands of dollars to get the fiber optic internet they would need.
“They can’t afford it and we don’t want them to pay for it,” Kelly said.
Kelly said officials wanted one central repository and thought the images could be downloaded over the internet, but New Carlisle, Bethel Twp. and Mad River Twp. deputies are not able to use it.
Mad River Twp.’s solution to the issue was to purchase an additional body camera and the deputy will send one body camera in with his paper work to a sergeant.
A Bethel Twp. deputy will take his body camera to the New Carlisle substation and will have the images burned on a CD.
The county has one server for the body camera images and had set up a satellite in New Carlisle to be able to feed the system, Clark County Sheriff ’s Chief Deputy Doyle Wright said.
“We didn’t know the internet was not going to be up to speed. We figured in today’s world that wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately, the fiber optics have not been laid, and when that does occur, we will go back to what we originally wanted to do,” Wright said.
Wright said some road deputies still have not been issued body cameras, but within the next couple weeks all the road deputies and township deputies will have them.
Body cameras will also be provided to the “book-in” area where most complaints and confrontations occur, Kelly said.
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