Union County Implement Largest County-Funded, Multi-Municipality Body Camera Pilot Program in N.J.

The Union County Prosecutor’s Office has announced officers within eight of its 21 municipalities will be provided with body-worn video cameras to wear during their patrol by the end of next month. Its deemed to be New Jersey’s largest county-funded, multi-municipality pilot program to date.

The municipalities included in the pilot program are:

• Elizabeth
• Garwood
• Roselle Park
• Plainfield
• Linden
• Scotch Plains
• Mountainside
• Fanwood
  

Equipment, installation, and training for each of the participating departments will be supplied by Taser International within the coming weeks.

Each camera weighs about 3.5 ounces. Every officer who wears the camera is required to active it during any on-duty encounter with a civilian, such as traffic stops, vehicle searches, arrests, etc., by pushing a large button located on the camera twice.

The only exceptions are when an officer is in sensitive venues such as schools or houses of worship. The camera records at all times, but they only save footage 30 seconds retroactively from the moment of activation.

Each officer will also “tag” his or her videos electronically and fill them into different categories throughout the workday.

“This can be done with a variety of devices, from smart phones to laptops,” according to the prosecutor’s office. “Once the officer returns to police headquarters following a shift, he or she will take the camera off and place it in a docking station; at that point the footage will be uploaded to cloud storage while the device also recharges automatically.”

Each Union County municipality was contact this summer to see which ones would be interested in the program. The prosecutor’s office says the initial goal was to involve a small handful of departments, but all of those that expressed interest ultimately were included.

“The program is being funded by a unique cost-sharing framework – for each participating department, the first-year average cost of approximately $1,350 per officer (approximately $750,000 total) is being covered by Prosecutor’s Office forfeiture funds, supplemented by $125,000 in forfeiture funds from the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, while the departments’ municipalities then are agreeing to multi-year contracts costing an average of $670 per officer, per year thereafter,” according to the prosecutor’s office.

Four large police departments within three states, Alabama, Arizona, and California, who’ve implicated the program have reported reductions in citizen complaints between 40 and 90 percent and reductions in police use-of-force incidents of 35 to 75 percent.

The prosecutor’s office says rates of such complaints and incidents will be monitored in cooperation with the participating police departments as well throughout the course of the pilot program.

“Certain high-profile events of the last several years in towns and cities small and large, nationwide, have illuminated a broad rift dividing many of our communities and the police who are sworn to protect and serve them. And while body cameras are not a cure-all for this issue, they offer police a valuable tool that can help bridge the gap,” Union County Prosecutor Grace H. Park said.

“These devices help achieve this by acting as an objective witness that produces valuable evidence during interactions between members of law enforcement and members of the public. This naturally generates accountability among both groups – for the officer and the citizen alike.”

At least 30 of more than 500 police departments in New Jersey currently use body cameras. Its approximated that throughout the county, at least a quarter of the nation’s more than 15,000 departments use them.