New Jersey Assemblyman Ralph Caputo said on Wednesday that the new private surveillance camera registry bill will assist New Jersey law enforcement agencies to fight crime and save assets.
Caputo added, “What we want to do here is to create a voluntarily registry to the police departments. People that have cameras on their buildings, commercial buildings or homes will be able to create a registry so that the police would have that. So instead of a scenario of wasting a lot of resources, they would know where these cameras are”.
Caputo is also involved in the sponsors of a bill that released on Monday with the purpose to assist law enforcement agencies to investigate criminal activity effectively and on time by access to private surveillance cameras data. People living in New Jersey will be encouraged to voluntarily register their devices with local police.
Assemblyman said that even though this activity is based on free will, there must be a legislation that regulates it.
Caputo also said, “If you have a country-wide prosecutor’s office that is trying to solve a crime, they want to make sure that all the communities in their jurisdiction are doing it in a consistent way, so that all the information requested consistently across the board. If we have each town doing it separately, it does not work”.
Lawmaker Thomas Giblin, who is also sponsor of the bill, said that surveillance camera videos can be worthy tools of investigation of different incidents done by the police.
Giblin said in a statement, “Having an existing registry that law enforcement officers can tap into when investigating criminal activity saves time, which is crucial when working against the clock”.
The text of the legislation showed that the name and contact information of camera owners will be included in the registry, the number and location of their cameras and other details like how footage from the camera is stored and how long it is saved for, will also be included.
Campaign groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, have shown concern about video surveillance methods being rolled out all over the US due to a “chilling effect on public life” and because of the reason that such systems could be open to abuse.
According to assemblyman Caputo, the bill has a requirement that it will not violate any constitutional rights.
The New Jersey City Department of Public Safety told the Sputnik News Agency that it was not going to comment on the effectiveness of the measure at this time.
News Source: www.SputnikNews.com
