LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — Vance Jochim has been attending Lake County meetings for years, listening to all the issues — including public safety and body cameras.
- Lake County Sheriff's Office has 5 body-worn cameras
- It's only 1 of handful of agencies that limits camera use
- RELATED: Investigators: Man Killed by Deputy Had History of Domestic Violence
"I think probably they should have those cameras. Probably it would be more beneficial for those deputies to have 75 percent accurate information than none," Jochim said.
But Lake County deputies don't wear them all the time. The Sheriff's Office is just one of a handful of law enforcement agencies that limit the use of body cameras for their deputies.
For the Lake County Sheriff's Office, they are only used by its DUI task force.
"In an evolving scenario, you can't know if you're going to be running up stairs or jumping out of a window, or chasing a suspect down the road. You can't guarantee that that camera is going to get a good representation every time," Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Jim Vachon said.
But cameras may have given a view of what happened during the county's most recent deputy-involved shooting. On Sunday afternoon, deputies spotted a man wanted on a domestic assault charge in Clermont. After a short conversation, officials said the man pulled out a gun, and that's when a deputy fired, killing the man.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate that use of force, but it will have to do that without body camera video.
"Obviously, it's a big budgetary concern," Vachon said. "It's not just the cost of the cameras, it's the cost of the retention and the cost of the maintenance. Our primary concern right now is putting deputies on the street, which is a huge jump in the budget."
There are several ways that law enforcement can use a body camera. One of them is by making drunk-driving arrests, for which the Sheriff's Office's DUI task force has five.
"We know right where the camera angle is, and we know that this angle is everything we need, and it's going to capture a true representation," Vachon said.
According to the FDLE, the Orange County Sheriff's Office had 770 body cameras, and Seminole County 200, last year.