The staff at the Jefferson County Jail in Hillsboro soon will have higher-quality cameras to monitor inmate activity.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office recently received a $156,940 grant from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which will cover most of the cost to have 75 new cameras installed in the jail. Cpl. Jeremy Rempel said the upgrades will enhance safety.
“We’re looking forward to it,” he said. “It’s for everybody’s safety. It’s not just for the staff, but also the inmates.”
The County Council voted unanimously April 22 to accept the grant.
Rempel said the jail’s current surveillance system provider, Security 101 in Creve Coeur, will begin to rewire and install the new cameras on June 24. He estimates the project will take two to four weeks to complete.
The Sheriff’s Office will pay Security 101 $157,871.76 to get rid of some of the existing, substandard cameras and install new ones, special projects manager Sgt. Perry Tindall said.
The grant funding covered 99.4 percent of the project’s cost, and the difference, $931.76, will be taken out of the Sheriff’s Office’s general budget, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Grant Bissell said.
The project includes installing 36 cameras on the first level of the jail – 32 dome cameras, two fisheye cameras, one dual-lens camera for the stairwell and one corner camera for an elevator, and the second level of the jail will get 38 dome cameras and one corner camera for the elevator, Tindall said.
Rempel said the current camera quality is poor, adding that when jail staff look at the monitor, most inmates are hardly recognizable.
He said some of the current cameras are placed in areas that leave blind spots where staff can’t see what’s going on. Other cameras are badly damaged from scratches.
The jail currently has a patchwork of 100 to 120 cameras that were installed throughout the years, and the most recent upgrades to the surveillance system were made in 2018, Rempel said.
“We’ve kind of been limping along with a limited warranty because this technology ages so quickly,” he said.
The new cameras will provide a sharper, clearer picture, and staff will be able to see more with the cameras’ wider angled lenses.
The new system also will provide improved audio pickup throughout the jail, Rempel said, adding that the current audio sounds jumbled, and it’s difficult to discern who is speaking.
The upgrades also will include control rooms, or bubbles, in each of the housing units, and the corrections officers stationed in the bubbles to monitor the inmates will have better computer screens to view the camera feeds, Rempel said.
“With the ability to have so many more cameras available, the more they’re going to be able to see,” he said.
Rempel said video recordings taken from the surveillance system are important for jail staff in fulfilling Sunshine Law requests, liability claims and attorney requests.
Jail administrator Brenda Short said not only do the cameras help identify inmates, but also staff.
“We had an inmate swear to his attorney, to the judge, to the news, that an officer shoved him down the steps during an escort and broke his legs,” she said. “Well, first of all, he never had broken a bone in his body while he was here, but the video (showed the staff member didn’t push the inmate) and saved his career, and he didn’t have to go to court. As soon as the judge saw that (video), it was a done deal.”