Deputies with the Flathead County Sherff’s Office will soon be wearing body cameras to record daily interactions with the public.

The equipment has been widely discussed and debated in law enforcement circles as both a transparency tool and a privacy challenge.

The small cameras that deputies would wear haven’t been universally applied, but Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry sees a shift toward the technology.

“I think the industry standard is going to be, in not that many years, that every cop in this country is going to have a body camera on,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Office is working on a variety of funding sources to implement its body camera program. Most recently, the Montana Department of Transportation awarded a group of grants to agencies for a variety of technology upgrades. The Sheriff’s Office is set to receive $11,050.

Other departments, such as the Lewis and Clark and Missoula County sheriff’s offices, will use their grants for body cameras. The Kalispell Police Department received a grant as well, which will go toward new vehicle cameras.

The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office is trying to secure enough money to outfit its entire force before introducing the cameras. Curry said that some deputies have used them before, but it has been a light touch. Within a year, he hopes to have everyone ready to go.

That includes wading into policy discussions that surround body cameras. Chief among those are topics such as privacy and the logistical challenge of retaining huge amounts of video data.

Curry said that his office is working on those. Ultimately, he says it will benefit law enforcement personnel and the people they serve.

“There’s nothing we do on a daily basis on any call that we don’t want to record,” he said. “But I think it certainly benefits officers during unwarranted complaints. It helps with prosecution issues, and it also does protect the public.”

The main benefit would be the ability to have a clear record of an incident to settle “he said, she said” arguments, Curry said.

For video storage, the Sheriff’s Office plans to work out a rule for temporary retention of data. Massive amounts of data can accumulate when cameras record every interaction for every officer, and that can be expensive to store. Curry’s office isn’t just buying the cameras. It will also needs the hardware to store and process the video.

“As a general rule, video that doesn’t result in some sort of case, complaint or issue won’t be retained forever,” he said.

The Kalispell Police Department will use its $11,050 grant to update cameras in two patrol vehicles. Police Chief Roger Nasset said that all Kalispell vehicles have cameras, but the department has been working to refresh the system for a while. After these two vehicles are outfitted, only one will be left with the old model.

“The system that we had that we’re replacing is just not as good as the new system we’re putting in,” Nasset said.

The new cameras will be linked to an automatic wireless download link. Before, officers had to manually download their video cache. The system also includes body microphones that record audio when the camera is rolling.

Vehicle cameras have been nearly standard in law enforcement for decades. Like Curry and the body cameras, Nasset said that the biggest benefit of vehicle cameras is that the provide a clear record of action.

“If there’s any question of what transpired: we have the video and audio,” he said.

Kalispell police won’t be getting into body camera operations in the near future. Nasset said that a big hurdle is the cost, but he’s also taking a conservative approach while body camera use is observed in the field. A study of body cameras may also receive the green light from the Montana Legislature.

With that ongoing, Nasset said that they will wait and see what a study turns up.

“There’s a lot of things that need to be worked out with body cameras before we just jump into it,” he said.

Reach reporter Matt Hudson at 758-4459 or by email at mhudson@dailyinterlake.com.