BENTONVILLE -- Benton County Sheriff's Office deputies will soon be wearing body cameras.
Maj. Kenny Paul with the Sheriff's Office expects it will take until the end of February or early March before the body cameras are operational.
Paul said the Sheriff's Office wanted to get ahead of any state legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to have body cameras for deputies and officers.
Seven states -- Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Carolina -- mandate the use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement officers statewide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Body cameras could help resolve complaints and help deputies when people complain about them, Paul said. Each of the office's 65 patrol deputies will be required to wear them.
The cameras also will help in investigations, Paul said.
Paul hasn't received any negative feedback from deputies about wearing body cameras. He said the Sheriff's Office has been testing a few brands for the last few months and there were no complaints.
The Sheriff's Office bought 85 body cameras and 60 camera systems for cars and other equipment for $633,000. The body cameras are compatible with camera systems that are now in several vehicles, Paul said.
Body cameras will not only help deputies in the preservation of evidence but will aid in officer safety, Paul said.
He said deputies have been using their body microphones to record some of their interactions for years.
The problem with the audio recording was it stopped recording if a deputy got some distance from his or her car, Paul said. The body cameras will pair with the system in the car so there will not be any loss of recording when deputies step away from their vehicles, he said.
Paul said the Sheriff's Office will provide some cameras for the other divisions to use.
"It's a new thing," Paul said. Eventually we would like any operational deputy to have them, but we thought it was important to give them to the guys in patrol."
Body cameras are widely used by law enforcement agencies nationally, but evidence regarding their effectiveness is mixed, according to a report published online this month by the National Institute of Justice, a research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The institute cited a Bureau of Justice Statistics report in 2018, which stated the main reasons law enforcement departments had acquired body cameras were to improve officer safety, increase evidence quality, reduce civilian complaints and reduce agency liability.
"Research does not necessarily support the effectiveness of body-worn cameras in achieving those desired outcomes," the institute's website states. "A comprehensive review of 70 studies of body-worn cameras use found that the larger body of research on body-worn cameras showed no consistent or no statistically significant effects."
Other departments
Bentonville police responded about 3:15 a.m. Jan. 10, 2021, to a disturbance at a home on Northwest Sixth Street, where a man, his wife and two children were inside.
Officers knocked on doors and windows for 12 minutes before using a code to open the front door. They pushed the barricaded door open and ordered the man to come outside. The man then charged officers with a knife. Officers yelled at him to drop the knife before firing their guns at him, according to Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Smith.
The man died at Northwest Medical Center-Bentonville. The incident was captured by the officers' body cameras.
A few days later, Smith cited video from the cameras in his decision to clear the officers of any wrongdoing.
Bentonville police officers had started wearing body cameras about a month earlier.
"Implementing the body worn cameras was pretty seamless for our department," said Cpl. Adam McInnis, Bentonville Police Department spokesman. "We had invested heavily in the research of different companies and models and found that the best camera for us was made by Panasonic, who also makes our dash cameras. This made it very easy to integrate the body worn cameras into the same secure digital storage that we were already using."
McInnis said there was a slight adjustment for officers with learning the proper use of the equipment but the cameras are pretty self-explanatory and very user-friendly.
McInnis said representatives from the company provided on-site training to officers and were able to answer any questions from the officers.
"The biggest adjustment for our officers was determining the best place to wear the cameras," McInnis said, adding the company provided a few attachments that provide different placement options.
The Fayetteville and Springdale police departments have been using body cameras for years. Rogers police don't use body cameras, said Keith Foster, public information officer.
Kelly Cantrell, a spokeswoman for the Washington County Sheriff's Office, said deputies started wearing body cameras last month. She said the cameras have been well received by deputies. The cameras are being worn by deputies on patrol and in the detention facility, Cantrell said.
Cantrell said the Sheriff's Office purchased 100 body cameras. It cost $279,410 for the cameras and other equipment associated with them.
Cassi Lapp, a spokeswoman for the city of Bella Vista, said police don't have body cameras and there's not a plan to get any at this time.
Aric Mitchell with the Fort Smith Police Department said his department implemented body cameras in March 2019, and Philip Pevehouse with the Sebastian County Sheriff's Office estimated his department has been using body cameras for almost three years.