Police boost presence at plazas during holidays
New mobile command unit can travel all over the township
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

From his perch in the Brick Township Police Depart-ment's new Mobile Command Center, Sgt. John Talty can see just about anything that's going on.

"We can pan the parking lot, search a vast area," he said, as he zeroed in on different sections of the parking lot at the Brick Plaza Shopping Center recently. "We can search much faster and zoom in on license plates."

The MCV features a 25-foot-high antenna with a digital security camera recorder, two computer stations, seven radios, a bathroom, refrigerator, benches, pullout tables and walls, and other amenities that make it possible for officers to use it for extended periods of time.

And the police department plans to put it to good use over the next several weeks of the holiday season.

Ramped-up holiday patrols are nothing new for the police department. But this is the first year officers have the benefit of a mobile unit that can be taken from shopping plaza to shopping plaza, Talty said.

"We'll be out looking for things that could go wrong, things that don't look right," Talty said. "We want to spread it around, so we can get the maximum bang for our buck."

Police are urging shoppers to keep a close watch and grip on their purses and avoid leaving them in shopping carts.

"We think it will have a great impact on shoplifting and purse snatchers, said Capt. Rick Bergquist. "Just the presence of a camera will be a deterrence."

The increased police patrols, which began Nov. 22, will target the many shopping plazas in the township. The patrols will include two-man walking patrols, bicycle patrols, plainclothes details and unmarked cars, police said.

"We will have hundreds of officers working in the plazas doing these selected patrols," Talty said.

The mobile command center came with a price tag of roughly $180,000. It will complement the new Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) truck, which houses guns, ammunition, shields, wet suits, tear gas, smoke bombs and a grenade launcher, which could be used in hostage situations or drug raids.

The township purchased the two vehicles with leftover funds from capital improvement budgets dating back to 2002, Bergquist has said.

The increased police patrols paid off last year.

"We did not have one shoplifting incident reported to the police," Talty said.

There was one purse-snatching, he said.

"He was apprehended in about two and a half minutes," Talty said. "He hasn't come back since."