Dash camera - was it working?

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
July 28, 2010

Regarding last Wednesday's crash on Greenwood Road, I wonder whether Deputy Oligney's squad car was equipped with a dashboard camera.

If it was, it should have been recording, since the emergency lights and siren were in use. My understanding of how the video-recording system operates is that it records whenever lights and siren are in use.

And many of the systems record all the time, even when emergency equipment is not in use. The recording time is 30-60 seconds before emergency equipment is turned on. This allows a deputy to record a driver's violation(s), before he turns on the emergency equipment.

There was a crash a while back when two squad cars were racing - not in McHenry County. The videocamera recorded a second squad car accelerating and hitting a car that turned left in front of it. The camera recorded the speed of its vehicle at about 70MPH in the 45MPH zone, and the black box in the squad car that crashed read out at 100MPH.

No doubt the sheriff's department will pull the black box from the 2004 Chevrolet Impala that crashed last Wednesday. How soon will it release the read-out of the vehicle's speed?