BELLEVUE, WA – A plan to place scores of surveillance cameras in high crime areas of Newark, N.J. to combat violent crime in the wake of a brutal triple murder next to an elementary school building is “a sham solution to a serious problem,” the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
Three college students were brutally murdered in a schoolyard Aug. 4 and a fourth was seriously wounded in a crime that has outraged residents in New Jersey and elsewhere. One of the suspects is an illegal alien. Anti-gun Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said $3.2 million in public and private funds will be spent on the camera project.
“There were apparently cameras around the school where this heinous crime occurred,” noted SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “but that didn’t prevent the killings. How typical of someone like Booker, who apparently dances to Bloomberg’s gun-hating mantra, to push a plan that will give Newark residents a false sense of security, and false hope that real action has been taken against crime.
“Cameras cannot stop the commission of a crime,” he added. “Presumably they can alert dispatchers to a problem, but only if those dispatchers are watching, and only after the crime has occurred. Cameras can shoot pictures but they can’t shoot back.”
A published report said as many as 120 cameras may be installed by next summer.
“How dare Mayor Booker pander this as a response to Newark’s out-of-control criminal element,” Gottlieb questioned. “He wants pictures when citizens demand real progress. If the mayor were really interested in protecting citizens, he would campaign for the repeal of New Jersey anti-gun laws that make it impossible for them to protect themselves.
“Newark’s robbers, rapists and murderers should be serving long sentences, not smiling for the camera,” he concluded.