Two committees have approved new equipment for the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office.
Members of the Joint Public Safety Committee and Finance Committee approved a recommendation last night for a $1.4 million proposal to be added to the 2026 County Budget for body cameras, squad-car cameras, updated Tasers, and computer equipment to store video.
Sheriff Dan Hartwig tells SeehaferNews.com that having the proposal in the budget is much needed for the department.
“It’s about transparency,” he explained. “It’s about keeping our officers safe. It’s about keeping our public safe…I think our county board knows the message that they want to make sure that they have the best equipment for our deputies out there.”
Hartwig said that body cameras weren’t popular years ago, but now deputies want to have one before they go on patrol.
Public Safety Committee Chairman James Falkowski says it won’t only be safer for officers but also for the public if they are jurors in a trial.
“If you’re in a situation where you to have evidence with these body cameras, you will have video evidence that can be presented,” he noted. “In which case, it’s going to be hard to dismiss.”
Falkowski says next year’s county budget will be managed to make the program work.
“It’s adequate for what we need,” he described. “And it advances us to the future. Because we’ve been lacking with developing these things. And now we’re pretty much par with what’s going on with any department in the United States.”
The county will be working with a company called Axon, which will provide cameras and new video storage equipment.
Hartwig says the new storage server would relieve a lot of space in the IT Department’s storage, which must store all their camera footage now.
There would also be an AI component that could utilize audio from the body cameras to assist in creating police reports, thereby reducing the need for deputies to fully write them out.
The proposal will be discussed at a future budget session. A rollout of the new equipment would begin in late 2025 with full implementation in 2026.
However, the County Board still needs to approve the proposal in the budget before anything gets going.
