Jacksonville Increases Number of Officers Wearing Body Cameras

Jacksonville, Fla., now has 380 officers on its streets wearing body cameras.

• By Jessica Davis
• Mar 21, 2019

There are now 380 officers wearing body cameras in Jacksonville, Fla., an increase of 170 in the last three months.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office first started rolling out its body camera program in October 2018. Since then, Jacksonville has experienced six officer-involved shootings.

The JSO can’t confirm whether any officer-involved shootings have been captured on an officer body camera.

“Well, we would like to have them caught on camera too because, like we said, we don’t oppose them. And we firmly believe that these cameras are going to show what we’ve been saying for years: 99.9 percent of the stuff we do is done correctly,” Jacksonville police union president Steve Zona said.

According to Action News Jax, about 19 percent of JSO officers and sergeants have been assigned to wear body cameras.

“You have to realize that they have to take these officers off of the street and send them to class to be trained to operate these body worn cameras,” Zona said. “It’s a logistical nightmare to get everybody trained and then to get the body worn cameras rolled out.”

JSO plans to add 250 body cameras every quarter until each officer and sergeant is equipped with one, a process that is expected to take two years.