Kane County Reporter

The Sugar Grove Village Board has approved police body cameras, acting on a request from Chief Pat Rollins.

The department is currently replacing all car-camera systems with Axon Enterprise cameras and wants to add Axon body cameras as well to have one unified system. It will be simpler for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which include reviewing and showing videos for an event.

"Currently, our in-car camera system is actually unsupported at this time," Rollins said. "It had an end-of-life back in 2017, so we were just replacing all the in-car cameras that are currently moving over to other Axon enterprise platform, the fleet program. We're looking hopefully to also supplement that with the Axon body cams, to integrate the two together, you know make the back end easier for the officers when they go to review the videos or are taken to court."

By law, all Illinois police officers are required to be wearing body cameras by January 2025. However, the Sugar Grove Police Department has decided to start the program early. The village received a grant earlier this year that would assist them in purchasing all the technology and gear required for getting cameras on all officers.

The department received three quotes for the program, one of which from Axon that totaled $104,000 for five years, with the cameras replaced halfway through that time period. The village received a grant for cameras of $22,000 which they are required to match with $22,000 of village funds. The cost for year one of the program would be just over $51,000 which the village already had budgeted, and years two through five would cost around $13,000.