TAMPA — A Spectrum News investigation has found information that gives insight into what caused Haines City police officers to stop using body cameras for more than two months.
City documents show that officers stopped wearing cameras on Oct. 1, due to “numerous and ongoing equipment and performance issues.”
The department has since replaced the cameras with devices from a different company.
HCPD started using cameras provided by LensLock in 2022 after Haines City Commissioners approved a $176,245 per-year, five-year contract with the company.
“Body cameras were things that a lot of the public wanted to see, and a lot of law enforcement wanted to see them as well,” Haines City’s Deputy City Manager Loyd Stewart said. “It obviously captures both sides of any interaction that happens.”
One incident that has come into the spotlight happened a few weeks after the department stopped using the LensLock cameras — a deadly incident involving a Haines City officer who shot and killed 24-year-old Louivens Ceus.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd has said the shooting was justified, because Ceus allegedly drove at an officer during a traffic stop, and the officer opened fire.
But because the department had stopped using the LensLock cameras, and had not yet replaced them, the incident wasn’t captured by body cameras, leaving investigators to use other clues in determining what took place.
City documents show the company promised 75 cameras for officers to wear, as well as 45 in-car cameras and accessories. Lenslock also agreed to blur out sensitive video on demand for the department, in a process called “redaction.”
But emails uncovered by Spectrum News show problems popped up as early as January 2025, prompting meetings between police, city officials and representatives of LensLock
“Had a lot of good discussions on both sides of that, and we were trying to work towards making a resolution to that,” said Stewart. “Unfortunately, we were not able to resolve all the concerns we had with LensLock.”
Stewart declined to disclose the concerns officials had, but the police department said the devices wouldn’t hold a charge for an entire shift, had repeated upload failures and that the in-car cameras and some accessories never worked.
This fall, Haines City pulled the body cams from the field and stopped paying LensLock. By Oct. 1, HCPD officers were no longer wearing cameras.
“Certainly not the only agency that does not have body cameras, although we are fully in support of having body cameras and will have them very soon,” Stewart said of the gap in camera usage. “But the fact that (the incident involving Ceus) happened when we didn’t have one is something that is in the hands of God.”
When the city stopped using the company’s cameras, it also meant LensLock stopped redacting or blurring video for the department, and, city emails show, police refused to release video to the public without redaction.
Spectrum News reviewed 575 city emails concerning the LensLock contract, and some documents revealed that the redaction issue caused some court cases to be delayed, and prompted judges to write orders to the Haines City Police Department demanding answers.
Internal emails show that the issue caused months-long waits for public records, even for prosecutors and public defenders.
An assistant state attorney complained to her bosses in June about not getting body cam video she asked for months earlier in March
Documents show that the issue delayed a criminal trial twice.
Police eventually provided the evidence and apologized.
Emails show members of the police department blame LensLock for the delays.
When contacted, officials at LensLock declined to provide an interview or comment for this story.
One internal email to the city from LensLock suggested Haines City was being too “proactive” with their redaction requests, that they were asking for more than any other city they work with.
A police captain wrote back that prosecutors were having, “To specifically request unredacted videos because they didn’t want the case to be dismissed by the judge due to not getting the redacted videos in time for trial.”
“We are working on a solution with that, and hopefully we’ll have that in place very soon,” said Stewart, when asked about the delays.
But former Miami-Dade County Judge Jeffrey Swartz believes Haines City police should have found a different solution a lot faster.
“It bothers me, and I am concerned and I am suspicious that the city has not found another way,” said Swartz, who’s also professor emeritus at Tampa’s Cooley Law School.
“The city has options, OK? It has the ability to gain relief, but they’re not doing it,” Swartz added. “The question is, how long did it take them to find a new provider? How long did they wait to terminate the contract? How long did they accept the excuses that they should not have accepted? And that’s the city’s fault. That’s the department’s fault.”
In October, the city formed a new partnership with Axon for body cams at a cost of $358,809.80 per year. This new deal is also a five-year contract and includes the same number of body cameras.
Former Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan said he knows Axon and its products well. He led the expansion of Axon-branded cameras to his hundreds of patrol officers.
“They’re a proven company with a proven product,” said Dugan. “Some of the critics will say it’s expensive — it’s very similar to Apple computers. Once you get an iPhone, an iPad, you end up (in that environment). It’s proprietary, where the software works with each other. But they’re not amateurs, they know what they’re doing.”
Haines City Police said that officers have completed training on their new Axon body cameras and started wearing them on Dec. 19.
He said the city is hoping to avoid litigation with LensLock and reach some sort of settlement.
The investigation into the shooting that killed Ceus remains ongoing. The officer who killed him, identified as Ryan Hamilton, is back on the force.
Andy Cole
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