Boynton police offer details about officers’ body cameras
Department is eighth area agency to equip officers with cameras.
BOYNTON BEACH — Boynton Beach police on Thursday will become the eighth Palm Beach County law enforcement agency to have its officers wear body cameras, Chief Jeffrey Katz announced Monday.
Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Florida Atlantic University, Highland Beach and Lake Clarke Shores police agencies also use the cameras, according to the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission.
All 86 Boynton officers assigned to road patrol will wear the cameras, and each officer will be given two. One will be used during the day, and the other when driving to and from work in a take-home car. When the other camera is not being used, it will be placed into a dock to upload the videos. Boynton police show how the body cameras work. See the video at
Boynton’s officers will wear the camera in the middle of the chest or on either side, and it’ll be held in place by a magnet. The camera turns on with two touches by the officer, or when the patrol car’s siren lights go on, said Capt. Joe DeGiulio.
Katz, who has been chief for
Palm Beach County’s teachers union declined Monday to certify the results of its presidential election after the losing candidate called for a recount.
Results tallied Saturday showed that Park Vista High teacher Justin Katz narrowly edged out Pahokee Jr./Sr. High teacher Gordan Longhofer by 28 votes out of 1,356 cast, a 2 percent margin of victory.
But Kathi Gundlach, president of the county’s Classroom Teachers Association, said the results “are unofficial at this time.”
“A recount has been requested as the vote differential was 28 votes,” she told The Palm Beach Post in a text message Monday evening.
The union’s elections committee will meet on Wednesday, she said, and “at that time a determination will be made how to handle the requested recount.”
Katz said in a statement on Facebook Monday night that Longhofer, who is a member of the union’s board of directors, had called for the recount.
In his statement, Katz said that the union has no policy about recounts in its rules and bylaws, but that he was told that the recount was being requested due to the “closeness of vote margin.”
But Katz, 33, said that the com- Get more news every day about Palm Beach County schools at the Extra Credit blog. pany that oversaw the voting process has already handed over the ballots to union leaders, many of whom opposed Katz’s outsider campaign.
“The ballots have been in the possession of the current CTA executive director (a supporter of my opponent) since the initial, objective third-party counting this past Saturday,” Katz wrote. “The lack of security and integrity surrounding any recount, given that fact, is of great concern to me.”
Katz ran for union president as an outsider, hoping to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the county CTA’s recent track record. Billing his relative youth and lack of prior union experience as assets, he vowed to bring “fresh blood and some more youthful leadership” to an organization that advocates for the county School District’s roughly 12,000 teachers.
Longhofer edged him out in a crowded field in the first round of