N.J. receives $5.7 million for seventeen police departments
Earlier this month the Department of Justice awarded New Jersey $5.7 million in grants to help seventeen local police departments; the grants are specifically aimed at purchasing surveillance equipment like closed-circuit cameras, gunshot detection systems, and mobile data centers; each city will receive either $250,000 or $500,000 based on the city’s size and violent crime; surveillance technology has already proven effective in helping New Jersey police departments track down and convict criminals; New Jersey’s attorney general is encouraging police departments to consider regionalizing and consolidating functions as the grants can be used to purchase equipment to create regional dispatch systems
Earlier this month the Department of Justice awarded New Jersey $5.7 million in grants to help seventeen local police departments purchase security cameras, license plate readers, and other sophisticated crime fighting technology.
Each city will receive either $250,000 or $500,000 based on the city’s size and violent crime rate.
The money comes as part of the Department of Justice’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program.
The cities of Newark, Camden, Jersey City, Trenton, Paterson, and Elizabeth will each receive $500,000 as they all have over 75,000 people and struggle with violent crime. The eleven other cities including Atlantic City, Pleasantville, and New Brunswick will each receive $250,000.
The grants are specifically aimed at purchasing surveillance equipment like closed-circuit cameras, gunshot detection systems, and mobile data centers.
In announcing the grants New Jersey attorney general Paula Dow said, “While surveillance equipment and other technologies can never be a substitute for the police officers out on the street, our experience confirms that this equipment can certainly help them, in really critical ways, in fighting crime and apprehending criminals.”
So far surveillance technology has already proven effective in helping New Jersey police departments track down and convict criminals.
In 2007, the Newark police’s network of security cameras captured footage of a deadly shooting that was used to help officers identify and eventually convict the perpetrator.
Carolyn Murray, the acting Essex prosecutor, said that the video was used in the courtroom to refute the shooter’s claim that he had killed in self-defense.
Murray said, “It was very obvious that [the suspect], from the moment he left the restaurant, [and] came down the steps, he was shooting his gun.”
Thomas Comey, Jersey City’s police chief, is also supportive of the technology and believes it can aid officers conducting investigations.
“Now an investigator has a tool that he can go back and say ‘During this time, right after the shooting, what were the cars in this general vicinity,” Comey said.
The grants will also go towards the purchase of license plate readers, which Union County prosecutor Ted Romankow says has been used in homicide investigations.
“We were able to track individuals who were involved. So it’s definitely of help to us,” Romankow explains.
Attorney General Dow believes that these grants will help police departments become “more efficient and more effective,” especially in light of the current economic situation.
“We all are required to do more with less again and again and that’s the purpose of this program, to help that problem,” Dow says.
Dow also encouraged police departments to consider regionalizing and consolidating functions as the grants can be used to purchase equipment to create regional dispatch systems.
“I challenge everyone to consider regionalization,” Dow said.
“I know in my hometown communities of South Orange and Maplewood, they just regionalized the court system there. It’s smart, it’s cost-efficient, it’s more effective and you get the best of both worlds.”
Dow said that New Jersey police departments should follow the example of Florida and Maryland which have already benefited from combining department functions.
