McLean County's presumptive next sheriff says county correctional officers are responding positively to the addition of body worn cameras in the jail.
Sheriff's Lt. Jon Albee said having an objective record is a valuable tool in reviewing jail incidents.
“To us, this is a common sense, proactive step to provide for better, not only training, but safety and security for the correctional officers and the inmates,” Albee said on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
Albee said body worn cameras were onboarded in the jail in mid-August. He sees them as a training tool, in addition to evidence in the event that an officer or detainee is injured.
“There are fights; there are responses to resistance,” he said.
Albee declined to make a guess as to how often that happens, but said there have been lawsuits filed, in which body cam footage could be used as evidence in defending officers’ actions.
“The men and women that work in the jail, the correction officers, truly desire to do this job well and do it the right way,” Albee said. “This is just another tool that they can use to debrief that process.”
The county has set aside a half-million dollars annually for the next 10 years to pay for broad technology upgrades in the Sheriff's Department. Albee is almost certain to be the person who oversees the plan’s implementation, at least at first. The sheriff’s lieutenant is running unopposed to replace Sheriff Matt Lane in the November election. Lane is retiring after 28 years with the department. Albee was also picked to fill Lane’s spot on the committee tasked with allocating the public safety and mental health fund collected through a shared sales tax agreement between Bloomington, Normal and the county.
The new suite of tasers, body cameras, in-car cameras, training modules, upgraded interview room cameras and software are Axon brand, serving both the jail and patrol functions of the sheriff’s department and including unlimited data storage space. Albee said bundling the upgrades under a single vendor was a cost-saving measure, reducing total costs by about $400,000.
“We’re essentially trying to ‘future-proof’ us for the next 10 years and include the jail in that,” he said.
Albee said the package includes officer training modules using virtual reality to replicate a range of scenarios — a “choose your own adventure” type module simulating various reactions and behaviors officers might face from virtual suspects or detainees based on their own responses.
“It’s about as close to a real-life scenario as you can get,” Albee said. “Our hope is to provide the tools and resources that our deputies and our corrections officers need to do their jobs well and thereby provide a great service to the community.”
Special Response Team
Albee said one de-escalation tool in the jail is the addition of a Special Response Team [SRT] about four years ago.
“Since doing that, we’ve seen a decrease in officer injuries. We’ve seen a decrease in use of force needing to be applied,” he said. “When a correctional officer has been unable to verbally gain compliance, the response of SRT has, in most cases, immediately gained compliance.”
Responding SRT officers wear additional protective gear, including a riot shield and helmet.
“This is not a normal response,” Albee said. “One example might be we have an inmate who’s refusing to leave the cell, or something to that effect. Before, that would require less protected officers to go in and go hands-on, which is going to lead to injury.”
Reviewing the footage
Albee said supervisors will use body camera footage, in part, to review officer performance. He said the new body cameras are always on, but they aren’t always recording.
When a recording is made, that footage is retained for “minimum of 90 days,” Albee said. The timeline may shift if, for example, an arrest is made and the footage is needed as evidence.
In the weeks following the program’s rollout, Albee said the response from officers has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
“On the patrol side of the house, this is something that we’ve had since 2022,” he said.
That’s when Illinois passed a law requiring sworn police officers to wear them.
“It’s gotten to the point where the officers—it’s almost like leaving an item off your tool belt or your duty belt if you don’t have your camera,” Albee said. “They want their cameras, because they overwhelmingly have shown and disproved complaints that were false, or can protect against lawsuits. … I think the correctional officers are already feeling that same way.”
