Video: An Anonymous Donor Helps Provide an Extra Pair of Eyes to One Police Department

HOUSTON, Miss. (WCBI) – The Houston Police Department is equipping officers with body cameras.

Smaller police departments have smaller budgets, which makes it harder for them to get this technology, but an anonymous donor is making it possible in the Chickasaw County town.

These top of the line cameras cost around $800.00.

“Body cameras are a big deal. Every officer, you know, needs body cameras, like I say, for their own safety and the public too. Keep confusion down,” says Chief Billy Voyles.

Voyles has been working for months to get cameras for his ten member department.

“We’ve been trying for a good while now to get body cameras, so we had an anonymous donor who helped us out a whole lot and we really appreciate him doing that for us.”

Officers started wearing their extra pair of eyes about two months ago.

“If we have to go hands on, or anything like that, it covers us to be sure that we’ve done our jobs right and then also, it helps the public, you know, it goes both ways. It doesn’t only help us, you know, it helps the public,” says D.A.R.E. Officer and Houston Patrolman, Jaycob Paden.

“Every time we get a call, this camera system is also setup to when you turn the blue lights on in your cruiser, it comes on. So, but it’s a good tool to have. ”

The camera footage is stored just in case someone has a question about an encounter, which happened weeks or months before.

“Dump them into a computer system to where they’ll be saved and stored and she’s trained by the company to do that. So, all we have to do when they get full, we’re responsible in keeping the batteries charged on our own and we’ve got two battery packs with them.”

The department has enough cameras for every officer on shift.