BROOKLYN — A $1 million state-funded initiative to install 150 security cameras in Borough Park and Midwood was announced Sunday by local politicians nearly a year after 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky was kidnapped from a neighborhood street and murdered.
The program, called the Leiby Kletzky Security Initiative, will place cameras at major intersections, schools, commercial districts and residential areas, Assemblyman Dov Hikind said. Last July, Kletzky was killed after he disappeared from a Jewish day camp. Security camera footage led cops to Levi Aron, who admitted to police that he smothered Aron with a towel then dismembered the child.
The cameras will provide a valuable tool in fighting crime and for counterterrorism initiatives, Hikind said. Borough Park and Midwood are home to one of the largest concentrations of Jewish families in the country.
“The Jewish community is the largest potential target for attacks,” Hikind said in a statement. “The security-surveillance system that we are about to put in place will not only decrease the chances of outside attacks, but it will also enormously enhance law enforcement’s ability to solve and prevent local crimes."
The program marks at least these second time that Hikind won funding for the installation of security cameras. In 2005, he allocated nearly $1.2 million to place 120 camera in nine N, D and F subway stations in his district in Brooklyn.
