St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office To Begin Using Body Cameras With Help From Tech College Students

Students at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College are helping to get body cameras on St. Croix County Sheriff’s deputies.

St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson said his department has been looking at body camera options for years. The department settled on a rugged Kyocera smartphone enabled with an app that automatically uploads audio and video from the field to a cloud-based service. But Knudson said standard cell phone cases wouldn’t stay on when officers were running.

In an attempt to solve the problem Knudson said one of his lieutenants designed a mount that uses high-strength magnets in officers’ shirt pockets that attach to thin steel plates glued to standard cell phone cases.

“But then came another challenge of getting them all put together … getting them epoxied so everything would hold,” said Knudson.

So, the department turned to WITC-New Richmond for help. Welding instructor Dan Wilkinson said his students were asked to fabricate 50 of the steel plates.

“This one was pretty simple but it really makes the students feel good about what they’re doing,” said Wilkinson. “It’s just a win-win for everybody doing these projects.”

St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office deputies will begin wearing the body cameras later this summer.

Wilkinson says his students have also fabricated dog kennels for the Hudson Police Department K9 units.