Manalapan town commissioners have signed off on a 10-year contract that will overhaul the town’s police technology — from body-worn cameras and tasers to in-car video and license plate recognition (LPR) cameras.
Police Chief Jeff Rasor said the department is moving from a patchwork of three- and four-year contracts to a single 10-year agreement with Axon, an industry leader.
The new body camera includes built-in language translation for up to 100 languages. Officers will be able to press a button, have speech translated into English, and then respond into the camera with their message rendered back into the other language.
Rasor emphasized that Manalapan’s current LPR system, run by a company called Insight, is a decade old and functions as a “license plate recorder,” not a reader. The new system will read plates in real time as they enter Manalapan and flag stolen vehicles, stolen tags, and cars tied to felony offenses outside the town.
Cameras at town entry points will be supplemented by LPR in patrol vehicles, allowing officers to scan plates as they drive and catch suspect vehicles that bypass fixed readers, he said.
Rasor called police technology a “force multiplier.”
“It gives us the opportunity to interact with the criminal before they actually commit the crime, and essentially making the town safer,” he said.
— John Pacenti
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