Marathon County Jail staff to wear body cameras on duty

WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) - The Marathon County Jail is instituting a program where all staff members will wear body cameras when working with inmates. Training was supposed to start in early December, but an outbreak of COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant pushed that back to avoid having large groups in a close classroom-type setting.

Jail Administrator Sandra La Du is excited to get the program underway. She says the video captured by the cameras will help settle any disputes or accusations that may arise on both sides.

The body cameras will also be able to record audio, which the current cameras mounted throughout the jail can’t do.

“The most difficult part of any interaction when you don’t have audio is he said or she said and accusations, and we are very lucky that in general when our staff is going in and having interactions with inmates, we have more than one staff available,” La Du said.

COVID-19 has been a concern since the start of the pandemic with so many people in a relatively small space. La Du says vigilance and strict protocols helped to keep their numbers fairly low for the environment.

“Our medical staff did a great job detecting, our jail staff did a great job, isolating, separating who was housed together, whether they had been positive or whether they had been introduced to a person who was positive. So we are able to get a fairly decent handle on things fairly quickly when it’s introduced,” she said.

The current plan is to have the body cameras up and running by February 1.

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