Bingham County Sheriff | The Bingham County fleet and transfer station cameras

Most of the cameras Bingham County owns are not watching the public. They are watching county vehicles, county scales and county employees, and they were bought by the Public Works Director rather than by the Sheriff.

Fifty-seven cameras inside the fleet

On 5 February 2025 the Board approved a three year contract with Samsara for cameras installed inside county trucks and graders. The minutes count them: “thirty-nine (39) cameras in dump trucks, light vehicles, eleven (11) cameras in motor graders and the graders are more expensive because they will have two (2) cameras and seven (7) cameras for the walking floor trailers in Solid Waste.” Then one more sentence, which is the important one: “These cameras can be accessed and viewed at any time.”^[1]

The price is $22,272.00 a year for thirty-six months. The Director said he had taken quotes and demonstrations from several companies and that Samsara was the best option for the county. The vote was unanimous.

One thing was raised and set aside. The minutes record that the contract “was reviewed by Legal Counsel and the only concern that he had was in regards to the retention time period but could be addressed at a later date”, because the equipment would not be installed and running for at least a month.^[1] Nothing in the Board’s record for the following sixteen months returns to it.

A fleet camera system is a location history. It records where a county vehicle was, when, and who was driving it, and the cameras face outward at the road as well as inward at the cab. The people whose working day it records are county employees, and the rule about how long it is kept was the one question the county’s own lawyer asked.

Watching the money

On 15 October 2025 the Director came back for three more cameras, at a different place and for a different reason. The minutes set it out plainly:

Mr. Whited stated that he would like to place 2 or 3 cameras, with each camera costing approximately $500.00. The goal is to obtain camera footage of the transfer of money and payments between the public and the employees.

He added that many times there is no audio, that he would like audio on these cameras, and that he would have an internal policy to help prevent situations. The Board was in favor. A commissioner moved to approve three cameras at $500.00 each for the Central Transfer Station, amended the motion to look into a panic button as well, and it carried.^[2]

That is the clearest statement of purpose any Bingham County camera has. It is not about crime in the street. It is about a cash transaction at a dump, with the public on one side of the counter and a county employee on the other, and both of them on the recording.

The year before, the same department had put two cameras and a video decoder in the scale house for recording scales, alongside one replacing a broken device at the transfer station, for $1,976.00.^[4]

What we do not know

No retention period has been published for any of it. No policy has been published for any of it, including the internal policy the Director said he would write. The record does not say who holds an account on the Samsara system, whether viewing is logged, or whether the transfer station cameras record sound.

If you want an answer

The Public Works Director has a standing weekly update slot with the Board of County Commissioners at 501 North Maple Street, Room 204, in Blackfoot, and both of these purchases came inside one. Ask for the Samsara contract and its data retention terms, and for the internal policy for the transfer station cameras, through the Board’s Request for Meeting form or a public records request to the County Clerk under the Idaho Public Records Act.