Dakota County Sheriff’s Office - BWC FY21

Dakota County Sheriff’s Office – Proposal Abstract

The goal of the BWC program is to build trust and increase cooperation between the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) and community members by increasing the transparency of law enforcement and community interactions, holding officers to a high standard of BWC use compliance and conduct, and using digital evidence to increase access to justice for all community members. The service area for this project is Dakota County Minnesota, which has a population of 5,706,494. Dakota County is 79,626.74 square miles of cities, towns, villages and rural areas. The beneficiaries of this program are the residents of Dakota County, the DCSO, law enforcement and the judiciary. The increased transparency benefits everyone in building trust and accountability. The judiciary benefit from the digital evidence, and law enforcement benefits from the footage to assess officer interactions with the public and compliance with organizational policies and procedures and MN and federal statutes.

This project is an enhancement of an existing BWC program within the DSCO. It will fund an additional 88 BWCs to be used by the Civil Division, Parks/Lakes/Trails Division, Correctional Staff, Court and Building Security and Investigation deputies.

The objectives of this project are to:

increase the number of DCSO personnel who utilize BWCs in their interactions with the public;
analyze data from BWCs to improve law enforcement responses to community members, and improve policies and protocols to decrease negative encounters between law enforcement and the public, and decrease the use of force;
increase transparency of law enforcement responses to, and interactions with, the public, including their compliance with BWC use policy; and
use/share digital evidence to advance access to justice for all community members, including both victims and offenders.

Outcomes

1.         Increased compliance to a target goal of 97% to 100% compliance across the office.

2.         Post BWC compliance rate on DCSO Transparency webpage

3.         Increase frequency of BWC footage capturing critical incidents

4.         Increase use of BWC footage to address complaints of misconduct/excessive use of force, and court cases

Deliverables

Attend required national meetings and regional peer-to-peer meetings
Access the TA provider to document the implementation and compliance process, and program impact
Document compliance with BWC policies
Maintain storage of BWC footage and data privacy per BWC policy
Share compliance rates with public on a quarterly basis
Generate data and metrics on the use of BWC footage and complaint/case disposition
Share BWC footage with public per policy parameters