The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors (MCBS) voted on March 25 to allow a $20,000 grant to lapse that was to go towards the purchase of “body cameras” for the Middlesex County Sheriff’s (MCS) Office. The board also voted to delay the actual purchase of the cameras until another date.
The grant had to be accepted and body cameras purchased by March 31. Supervisors, however, made it clear that the county is on the way to purchasing cameras.
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One of the issues that prompted the board’s decision to let the grant lapse was that Sheriff Bushey indicated there “may” be some new issues with the renovation of the sheriff’s department office that could delay the opening of the facility.
The board agreed to begin immediately seeking other grants to go toward the purchase of the cameras and to coordinate that effort between the sheriff’s office and county officials.
History
The use of body cameras has been a hot topic in Middlesex since 2020 when George Floyd, an African-American man was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minn. Since then there has been a nationwide effort to get body cameras on all police — for protection of the public and the police.
