Middlesex deputies to soon wear body cams

The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors (MCBS) voted on Tuesday, Aug. 6, to accept a federal grant of $27,320 to go towards the purchase of body-worn and automobile dash cameras for the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Office.

The grant was awarded through the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and requires a local match of $6,830.

At an Aug. 3, 2022 board meeting, Robert Jackson of Urbanna requested that the board of supervisors encourage the sheriff to purchase cameras to make police duties more “transparent.”

At that 2022 meeting, Middlesex County Sheriff David Bushey said, “We want body cameras more than anyone else. But, we need to be accredited and when we are we can get grant funding to buy them. We need to wait until then so the cameras don’t cost taxpayers out of the county’s budget.”

Sheriff Bushey informed the board at the Aug. 6 meeting “that the time has come to get cameras.” He noted that the reason the county sheriff’s office was not accredited was because of poor “storage” conditions at the old sheriff’s office building in Saluda.

With supervisors approving $3.3 million for the revamp of the former Lewis B. Puller Center building at Cooks Corner into a new sheriff’s office, the office is on the way to state and federal accreditation and proper storage facilities for the cameras, said Bushey.