North Brunswick Police Get Body Cameras

NORTH BRUNSWICK, NJ - North Brunswick Township applied for, and received, a $20,000 federal grant that will pay for the outfitting of its police department with body cameras.

North Brunswick will be the first town in the region to use the technology: South Brunswick, New Brunswick, East Brunswick and Woodbridge currently do not have body cameras, although in South Brunswick, all patrol cars have cameras. North Brunswick already tested the cameras out, by having a traffic officer wear one for the past month. Expect every officer in the field to have them on by this summer. Edison Township will outfit its department with body cameras in March.

Captain J.T. Miller of the New Brunswick PD said his department supports their use and is researching the logistics behind equipping the New Brunswick police force.

Federal grants were awarded this month to 37 municipalities across New Jersey and distributed by the New Jersey Attorney General's office. Here is the entire list of all the towns that will get the cameras. Police departments had to apply through their county prosecutor's office to receive the federal funds. North Brunswick and Perth Amboy were the only two municipalities in Middlesex County to apply and receive the funding. North Brunswick will purchase 40 body cameras with the grant.

“The grant covering $500 toward each camera really is what made it doable for us. And anything that can help us in current times, current technology, with transparency, we’re all for,” North Brunswick Police Captain Brian Hoiberg told PIX 11.

The grant will cover a large part of the cost; North Brunswick Township agreed to pay for the rest.

Linden was one of the first police departments in New Jersey to start using body cameras, and a camera worn by an officer there captured an interaction he had with Ahmad Rahimi, suspected of planting bombs in Chelsea over the summer.

“I think it protects everybody involved,” Capt. Hoiberg told PIX 11, “because it’s a separate and completely neutral, fact-based recording of what happened."

New Jersey is at the national forefront when it comes to police use of body cameras: Only a few years ago, just 50 police agencies in the state had body cameras. Today, after two rounds of federal funding distributed by the Attorney General, more than 240 – nearly half of the roughly 500 law enforcement agencies in the state – have the cameras.

A photo of an officer in West Orange, NJ wearing a body camera/Township of West Orange