Cameras protect citizens and officers

scottw@standard-democrat.com

SIKESTON -- There were a lot of law enforcement agencies that rushed out to purchase on-officer cameras following the controversial event in Ferguson.

But the Sikeston Department of Public Safety wasn't one of them.

"Our officers already had them -- not many people knew that we already had them out on the road," said Capt. Jim McMillen, public information officer for the Sikeston DPS. "We've been using cameras like this for over 10 years. The early ones were not as good of quality as what we are using lately -- and we have a lot more now. We only bought a couple to start with that we used predominately on our power squad."

Officers on "power squads" working peak hours were the first to be equipped "to help protect them because they were proactive and a lot people interpret that as officers picking on people," McMillen said.

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