Atlantic City Police Officers To Wear Body Cameras During Patrols
By Cleve Bryan
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ (CBS) – Atlantic City Police announced three initiatives aimed at increasing accountability for police officers.
The department purchased and has now deployed 130 body cameras to be worn by uniformed officers during every patrol.
They moved the internal affairs office from where people complained of having a hard time finding it at the corner of Morris and Atlantic Avenues to the 5th floor in City Hall.
The third announcement is completion of a custom software system they have been developing for about two years which tracks officer behavior and alerts supervisors to negative patterns.
Chief Henry White says all these steps are to "bridge that gap and that divide between our law enforcement agency and the community here in Atlantic City."
In New Jersey, all police departments are required by the state Attorney General's Office to report internal affairs complaints and excessive force complaints.
In Atlantic City, internal affairs complaints decreased from 215 in 2013 to 144 in 2014, and excessive force complaints have also dropped from 57 to 42.
Steven Young, president of the South Jersey Chapter of the National Action Network says local police can do all they want to reduce complaints, but public trust depends on how they are resolved.
He supports two bills in Trenton, S1236 and S2718, that move toward requiring state-level investigations for internal affairs complaints and police involved shootings.
"Prosecutors of local municipalities for them to investigate a police involved shooting is a conflict of interest," says Young.
