Below is the Bonners Ferry Police Department “Public Relations Notice”. I will tell you that the current cameras do blink red, and Johnson did turn his camera off during the traffic stop. I also encountered McBride after my speech to the City Council on this matter (December 19th). McBride’s camera was blinking red, and I thanked him for recording. The new body cameras and dash cameras have/will be purchase for $57,331 (budget & ARPA funds). I was under assumption this purchased happened after the City Council approved my request on October 17th (I requested the upgrade purchase on August 22nd due to an incident). If the City of Bonners Ferry was planning on buying these body and dash cams, then why didn’t they budget for them in the August budget meetings???? Instead because of the ISP investigation of Johnson deleting his body cam recordings they scrambled after this year’s budget was over. If you watch the October 17th Council meeting’s video (in comments below) you will see Chief of Police Zimmerman said that he had budgeted to get new shotguns this year, but ISP donated some. So now that the money is freed up he would like to transfer that money to purchase the body and dash cams and then use ARPA money for the balance due. The City Council voted yes. Watch the video in the comments below to verify for yourself.
While I appreciate the “Public Relations Notice” from Bonners Ferry Police Dept….it has misleading information.
Boundary County Sheriff’s Office Dave Kramer and I talked this morning. He assures me that he did have a conversation with his department. He stated it might be difficult to 100% make sure the camera is recording all interactions, but they will do their best. He did ask his department to do their best to record per the recommendations in the sheriff department’s policy manual.
