Jamesburg court implements new television technology
Al Wicklund
JAMESBURG Jamesburg Municipal Court soon will be able to handle matters such as arraignments, sentencing and changes in bail involving inmates at county and state jails via two-way television.
The inmates would make their court appearances in Jamesburg’s Court Room on a large-screen TV, while seated in a studio at a correctional facility.
Unless there are some unforeseen obstacles, Jamesburg Police Chief David Lester expects the TV court will be in use in a month of two.
But, Chief Lester said Wednesday that the court use of television is just a small part of what TV has to offer law enforcement agencies.
Chief Lester said television offers opportunities for increased and improved police training as well as for increased and improved cooperation among the state’s law enforcement agencies that cover 566 municipalities and 21 counties and the state’s various agencies that are involved in safety and security, ranging from state police to authorities with security forces.
The chief said Jamesburg is one of six Middlesex County towns scheduled to participate in this use of technology in the courtrooms.
The other communities to take part are South River, Woodbridge, East Brunswick, South Brunswick and South Plainfield.
South River recently installed a system at its renovated police headquarters. East Brunswick has been using the TV system since July.
"When inmates make televised courtroom appearances, it will cut down on the costs for vehicles and law enforcement personnel used in transporting inmates to the courts and back to the jails," Chief Lester said.
The chief said that on those occasions when inmates have had a long waiting period at court, his men have taken responsibility to return the inmates to their quarters.
The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office is providing $7,000 to set up video conferencing equipment for the courtroom. The money comes from funds seized by the county from convicted criminals. The Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders approved the distribution of funds last week.
The equipment for the courtroom would include cameras, cables and wiring, large-screen monitors, audio components and dial-up links to correctional facilities.
Chief Lester said in the near future he could see Jamesburg and other police departments benefiting from an expansion of court TV programs.
"We could use two linkups in the department itself," he said.
"One could be used for training. Why send two police officers to Trenton or other parts of the state or neighboring states when you could bring the same training session to a larger number of officers in your department’s conference room, and not waste time and expense in traveling to the training site," he said.
Chief Lester also sees some use for interactive TV in training situations, particularly as the technology continues to improve.
"Police also can use television in working among departments. We’ve had officers travel to identify suspects. Television IDs can be more effective than they would have been before now that officers will be working with a 36-inch screen as opposed to the older 15-inch screen.
"TV can be a major help when there are cases with a sense of urgency, such as with missing children.
"If Rahway police have a suspect and a car with a load of items they believe to be stolen, they can send pictures of the items to departments that are dealing with large-scale robbery or a series of robberies," the chief said.
Chief Lester said as technology improves and gets more sophisticated so does police work and television is part of this technological explosion.

