By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton plans to approach Princeton University and other educational institutions in town to ask them to contribute toward the municipality buying police body cameras and related equipment.
“Our position is, look, we provide a lot of services, particularly to our (tax) exempt institutions. This is a high priority for the community, it provides a service to them and we would like to see if they would contribute toward it,” municipal administrator Marc D. Dashield said Monday during Mayor Liz Lempert’s press conference.
He said there is no specific dollar amount the town would seek as a contribution from each institution.
“Not having received a proposal, we’ll decline to comment on the body camera issue at this point. We’ll certainly review it once we have it in hand,” said Princeton University spokesman Dan Day by email Tuesday.
The town is going to equip its police officers with body cameras, a direction that other communities increasingly have moved in as a response to high-profile encounters nationally between members of the public and police. Police forces — big and small — have been turning to using the devices, shown to reduce police use of force incidents and also citizen complaints against officers.
“This is not a panacea, but it can clearly address doubt and uncertainty in highly controversial situations,” said Steve Tuttle, spokesman for Taser International, the company that came out with the eponymous electroshock weapon and today is in the police body camera business.
Taser AXON body cameras are used in 30 of the 64 major cities in the United States, including by the Los Angeles and Dallas police departments, he said. Their use is seen as impacting the behavior of officers and members of the public.
“People behave differently on camera when they’re recorded,” Mr. Tuttle said.
Princeton intends to see what “best practices” are for using the equipment and what experiences other police forces have using cameras before rolling them out, Mayor Lempert said.
“Certainly, we’re not going to be the first community to use body cameras,” she said. “And so, there’s been many other communities that have dealt with these issues and I think we can hopefully learn from them.”
Mr. Dashield said the town is the midst of getting cost estimates for the equipment. Mayor Lempert said the cameras themselves are the least expensive part, given how video storage is another cost. One model of Taser AXON camera sells for $399, for instance.
“And one of the things we need to work out is how long do you keep the video for and if you’re keeping it for weeks versus months versus a year, then that all adds to how much capacity you need and how much you need to budget for,” said Mayor Lempert.
