The Manistee County Sheriff's Office is benefiting from body cameras donated by the Midland County Sheriff's Office.
The 45 body cams and related equipment are expected to save the Manistee County Sheriff's Office up to $67,500.
Manistee County Sheriff Brian Gutowski said the cameras are "a big deal" and that his office is "very grateful to Midland County for being willing to do that for us."
Gutowski said in his report at the September Manistee County Public Safety Committee meeting that the Midland agency recently purchased new body cams and donated its old ones.
"Their previous body cameras are the same ones that we use, which are no longer manufactured by WatchGuard," Gutowski said. "Every time we send one in, I think it takes weeks, if not months to get it back and it costs about $1,500 a pop to get them fixed."
Midland's 55 new cameras cost an estimated $250,000, Gutowski said.
Captain Shannon Guilbeaux of the Midland County Sheriff's Office, said Midland replaced its body cameras earlier this summer.
"We had the WatchGuard body cams, WatchGuard was purchased by Motorola Solutions and our yearly warranties to replace the body cameras that weren't working was up in the spring of this year," Guilbeaux said.
Because of the warranty situation, the department leaders knew they would have to factor replacement body camera costs into the 2024 budget.
"We actually got them in service in our road patrol, and our jail staff, and court security staff the beginning of the summer," Guilbeaux said. "So, the sheriff talked to me about donating whatever we had left."
Guilbeaux said the sheriff's office also donated some body cams to the Coleman Police Department in Midland County.
"We figured it would be better to find someone that could put some good use to them, that's why we put it out there through the ( Michigan) Sheriff's Association and Manistee reached out to us first," he said. "We had a lot of people that were interested, they beat everyone to the punch and they ended up getting them."
Gutowski was lucky to have seen an email while on vacation when the donation offer notice came through.
"They were donating to anyone interested. There were 45 body cameras along with the charging docking stations, their mounts to put them on the uniforms and everything else," he said. "So I immediately stopped everything I was doing and sent an email so we were able to get those 45 body cameras sent up to us."
Gutowski said the body cam donations will buy the sheriff's office time to financially plan how to replace the now-discontinued cameras in the future.
The donated cameras will be used as backups in case current cameras break.
"So when one goes down, instead of paying $1,500 to get it fixed and brought back to us, we'll set that one aside and we'll be able to use one of these backups," Gutowski said.
'Strong-armed'
Gutowski's announcement on the donated body cams was part of an overall discussion at the meeting about the general state of frustrations from police leaders when purchasing equipment and planning for the future.
He explained that his Taser recently experienced a "catastrophic fault."
"And when we called Taser to try to replace it, they advised that they will no longer send us new models of the Taser that we use throughout the whole agency," Gutowski said.
He noted that he was frustrated since Taser is "the only acceptable tool in that realm" of conductive electronic weapons, and police are required to have them.
The sheriff's office submitted a Manistee County Local Revenue Sharing Board grant application for five Taser 10s and for a service plan for all tasers for five years. The cost also includes holsters for carrying and a two-day instructor course. The cost is listed as $40,239.
Taser 10 is an energy weapon manufactured by Axon.
Gutowski said there are currently Taser 10s or Taser 7s available for the agency to purchase.
"We elected to go with Taser 10 because it gives us more time that they will be relevant in our opinion, rather than going with (Taser) 7 and then they're going to make those obsolete and make them go to (Taser) 10," Gutowski said.
The plan is to have Tasers for jail staff, and the jail's Tasers will be backups for the road patrol in case replacements are needed.
"They are incredibly expensive," he said. "Five Tasers with a five-year plan includes all your practice shots you have to do every year, batteries, all the stuff that is included, plus the warranty (is) about $40,000."
Chris Banicki, Manistee County Jail administrator, said costs increased from $1,400 per Taser, to now being over $5,000 per device.
Josh Glass, Manistee police chief, said large manufacturers of needed equipment will often know they hold a monopoly and require agencies to upgrade to newer models.
The equipment is often requisite by state standards for police.
"Once they are the sole source on the market, they force you with upgrades. We've seen it with body cams, we see it with Taser," Glass said. "It's just very frustrating because they strong-arm you to upgrade. It's a great business model."
He said often police leaders will try to get ahead of a future purchase when the current model of equipment will no longer be available.
"From small municipalities in small counties, it's pretty tough," Glass said. "You don't know how sustainable your new equipment's going to be in five years. ... It's really frustrating when people like us are expected to plan three, five, 10, 15 years out.
"All of a sudden you're back again (at) like a revenue sharing or a county commission (meeting) saying 'Listen, I know five years ago, you gave me $20,000, but they're saying they're not manufacturing them, they're strong-armed us into something different," Glass explained.
Gutowski said several years before he became sheriff, the sheriff's office bought in-car cameras and body cameras with an entity. Then after about a year, Michigan State Police signed a contract for body cams and Gutowski said they quit selling the model that his office had just bought and moved to a different body camera.
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