All New Jersey state troopers to get body cameras within a year

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey plans to put body cameras on all state troopers who work in the field and is issuing guidelines on how local police forces statewide should use the devices.

Acting Attorney General John Hoffman, who outlined the plans Tuesday, also announced $2.5 million in state funding to help local police departments buy body cameras.

"The way to maintain mutual respect and trust between law enforcement and our communities is through accountability of police and civilians alike," Hoffman said.

New Jersey is among the first states with plans to put body cameras on all state troopers. Their use already was brewing as a hot topic in law enforcement before a spate of high-profile shootings by police nationally during the past year, including the death last August of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Civil rights groups and police officials generally support using them, though there's not universal agreement on what rules should be in place to balance the sometimes disparate interests of accountability and privacy.

"Whether body cameras are a good thing or a bad thing depends entirely on the policies behind them," Chad Marlow, the American Civil Liberties Union's advocacy and policy counsel, said in an interview Tuesday. He said it's important that all footage neither be required to be made public in open records requests nor exempted wholesale from state records laws.

Hoffman said New Jersey's rules strike the appropriate balance dealing with privacy, video retention and other issues. The NAACP and several other civil rights groups appeared with him as he unveiled the initiatives, though the ACLU was not among the groups.

The directive from Hoffman's office generally requires officers with cameras to have them on during certain types of interactions with the public but limits their use in homes, schools, hospitals and places of worship.

Hoffman said the state would buy 1,000 cameras for troopers during the next year or so at a cost of $1.5 million. The money also would cover computer upgrades needed to use the cameras.

The $2.5 million to help pay for local departments' cameras is to come from forfeiture funds.

About 30 law enforcement agencies in New Jersey are using cameras to some degree already. That number is expected to rise as a result of a 2014 law that requires that police cars have dashboard cameras or officers to have body-mounted cameras. Body cameras cost less and have more versatility.

Lawmakers in several states have been passing policies dealing with camera use.

A new South Carolina law requires all police officers to have them. Pending legislation in Connecticut and a policy in Alabama would put cameras on all troopers there.

Christopher Burgos, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association of NJ Inc. issued a statement Tuesday regarding the initiative, saying the STFA was never asked for input on the implementation of the body cams. His statement reads:

“Our Association (STFA) was never asked for input or anything on this body cam matter. It was conceived behind closed doors, and don’t get us wrong, we knew body cams were coming, but once again we were left out of the process purposely, and had to go to court…again, to attempt to get some clarity as to what was coming. We view this as a negotiable issue that affects terms and conditions of employment for our trooper members.

All of a sudden millions of dollars are available for this initiative, meanwhile, we are 500 Troopers below adequate staffing statewide, we had to file many complaints over the past several years against the State for not purchasing new hand guns in a timely manner, as the old ones wore out and malfunctioned often, and our transportation needs have been neglected due to budget balancing tricks called 'sweeping the accounts' every fiscal year that take the buying power away from us to get new patrol vehicles. Meanwhile we have cars with over 200,000 miles on patrol and emergent repairs often go between $5000 -$7500 per car to keep them running.

The funding gimmicks for body cams are troubling, as data storage, band width and Administrative costs will be significant..long term, as in the NJSP we have to keep all recordings on file forever. We foresee more funding battles down the road for our basic law enforcement mission and daily law enforcement needs statewide, as whenever new initiatives are created without dedicated funding, other areas usually suffer. We will continue doing our duty professionally and without fail, as we were the first agency in the state to have dash cams in all our patrol vehicles over a decade and a half ago, while other agencies shockingly still have none today. What I see here as of now is a policy that has more to do with “gotcha’s” than truly having the best tools to serve the public. We would want to have a dialog with the state as this goes forward to implementation, and we will also be in the courts as well, to make sure we, as a major stakeholder have a seat at the table.”

Kevin McArdle contributed to this report.

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