The Boone County Commissioners approved funds to purchase a new security camera system for all county buildings, including the county jail.
“We will be replacing all the cameras and door locks throughout all the county buildings,” said Sean Horan of the Boone County Information Technology office.
During a July 6 Boone County Commissioners meeting, Horan said the county’s current security camera system is 12 years old and that county officials believe the system is in need of an update to meet storage retention requirements. The new system will cost approximately $600,000, Horan said.
“We feel like we will be filling a few holes that currently exist,” Horan said. “Seven-hundred terabytes is actually what we have currently, and we are not meeting the requirements put forward by the county council with regards to retention at all of the various county buildings.”
Cameras in security areas at the Boone County Jail are required to store footage for two years. Cameras outside of those areas of the jail, such as the basement or outside the front entrance, are required to store footage for 180 days, and all other county building cameras are required to store footage for 90 days. The system would provide cloud storage capabilities.
“There’s a lot of flexibility moving forward as technology continues to improve with regards to things like facial recognition and license plate readers and so forth,” Horan said. “We’ll be in good position to be able to benefit from those types of technology improvements.”
The camera’s system will be new but will be purchased from Security Pros, LLC, the same vendor the county received its existing cameras from. Switching to a different software vendor would have resulted in “substantial additional expense,” according to an ordinance the commissioners approved, allowing the purchase.
Horan said the cameras would be installed in the fall and that the first cameras would be installed at the county jail. He said there would be at least 300 cameras installed at the jail alone.