Effort toward Paterson police using body cameras hits another delay

PATERSON — The much-delayed use of body cameras by Paterson police officers has hit another speed bump.

Now the city must buy 50 licenses from the private company that provided the camera equipment so that Paterson law enforcement officials would have sufficient access to view the video recordings, officials said.

The City Council is scheduled to vote next week on a $93,600 contract that would provide the licenses for four years. If that contract gets approved, then those assigned the licenses – like top-ranking officers and members of the Internal Affairs division – would undergo training on the video monitoring system.

Paterson is the only major city in New Jersey where cops don’t wear body cameras. Paterson had been awarded state funding for cameras in 2015, but opted not to buy them.

Last January, when the council finally approved the purchase of 150 cameras, the city’s police chief at the time, Troy Osward, said they would be in use by March. But Oswald retired Feb. 1, and the department has failed to make good on his projection.

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Mayor Andre Sayegh said he now expects city officers to begin wearing cameras at the end of December or in early January.

“We’re closer than we’ve ever been,” the mayor said. “We’re going to have them. Paterson police officers will be wearing body cameras soon.”

But the leader of Paterson’s Black Lives Matter group, Zellie Thomas, predicted that city officials will come up with “more excuses” to delay the use of the body cameras until the middle of next year. Thomas noted that next month will mark the two-year anniversary of Sayegh’s City Hall press conference promising the cameras as a way to improve community trust in the police department in the aftermath of Jameek Lowery’s controversial death.

“We’re seeing a failure by this administration to provide any accountability and transparency for its police department,” Thomas asserted.

More police reform

During Tuesday night’s council meeting, officials discussed another reform that Sayegh promised two years ago – the creation of a civilian review board for citizen complaints against law enforcement officers.

Sayegh’s law director, Farrah Irving, said the legal challenge to the Newark review board has delayed Paterson’s effort. Irving told the council that the Newark program is still being fought in court by the police unions and that the case has gone to the state Supreme Court. Paterson will wait for the Supreme Court decision before moving ahead on its own review board, she said.

Paterson Public Safety Director Jerry Speziale told the council that the purchase of the body camera system monitoring licenses is the last hurdle to the start of the program. He said the city has finished training officers in the basic use of the cameras, has adopted approved guidelines and policies for their use and completed the building renovations needed to provide a climate-controlled storage area for the electronic system.

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Speziale said in an interview on Wednesday morning. He said the city needed to take time to make sure everything was handled correctly for the debut of such a significant new program.

“I don’t want to push the start button and then have to push the stop button,” Speziale said.