SKIATOOK, Okla. — Police in Skiatook now have bodycams and they hope it will help with transparency and accountability.
Officers said they’ve been trying to get them for years and that it’s important to have them while they serve the community.
“So important, it helps us with transparency and accountability with the public, but it also is a really reliable tool of evidence for prosecution and for criminal investigations,” said Skiatook Police Officer Kim Okerson.
The Skiatook Police Department got them with the help of a $10,000 grant from the Oklahoma Municipal Assurance Group.
Okerson said they hope it will help officers and the community.
Several people in Skiatook shared their thoughts about the cameras with FOX23.
“It helps everyone really, it helps the police and then it’s helps, you know, just in case if they do something wrong, it helps the people that they do wrong to, either way it’s helpful so, it’s hard to argue when it’s on camera you know,” said Brian Hurt.
“I think anything to protect the community is a great idea, protect themselves, protect me, I have kids in this community, I have lots of kids in this community, and you know drugs unfortunately and crime effect every type of demographic, so I think anything the police can do to help out is a wonderful idea,” said Owen Collins.
Okerson said it’s going to make a huge difference to their police department when it comes to helping with prosecutions and protecting officers.
“It makes such a huge difference instead of having like a ‘He said, he said,’ moment, because sometimes we’ll only have two officers on, so we’ll have one officer at a call and another officer at another call, so it’ll be really great for us to go back and view the video from the bodycam and see exactly, you know, how things were said, or how things were done if we have questions about it, or if the District Attorney’s office has any questions about how something went down they can actually just watch it for themselves,” she said.
Okerson said she’s excited about it.
“Pretty excited about it I mean again, it’s a form of accountability for everybody, and you know in this day and age when things are said about officers have said or done something wrong it’s nice to be able to go back to the camera and go, ‘No that was recorded,’ so we can look at it,” she said.
Okerson said everybody’s already been issued their body camera. They’ll be required to wear them starting in January, but Okerson already has hers in place on the front of her vest.
Police said they’ve got their eyes on more technology will help them.
Okerson said at the moment they’re still writing out all their citations, so they would really like digit ticket technology next.
“We would really like to have digiTICKETS at some point in the future, of right now we still hand write all of our citations, so we would really like to move into today’s times as far as technology goes with that that would be wonderful,” she said.
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