Democratic Candidate for Middlesex District Attorney David Solet Urges Somerville Not to Make the Same Mistake Cambridge Made in Banning Critical Public Safety Technology
Urges Somerville to Employ the Use of Police Body Cameras
The following can be attributed to David Solet, a veteran prosecutor and 2025 Middlesex County Prosecutor of the Year who is challenging current Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan in the September 1 Democratic primary.
“The hesitancy among some Somerville leaders to embrace the use of body cameras would repeat the mistake made by the City of Cambridge when it suspended its ShotSpotter system. Foregoing critical public safety technology is short-sighted and places our citizens at risk.
Cambridge already made a serious mistake in May when it suspended ShotSpotter, which alerts public safety and EMS workers to gunshots in our neighborhoods to prompt a rapid response. The need for ShotSpotter was evident just three weeks ago when a young father, 32-year-old Cambridge DPW worker Xavier Bautista, lay dying on a Cambridge street corner after being shot. Police weren’t alerted for more than an hour when his body was found by a pedestrian.
Somerville should equip its officers with body-worn cameras to support law enforcement, to protect its citizens, and to protect the credibility of our system of justice.
The use of police body cameras has become a vital and widely-accepted tool in law enforcement to capture video evidence of encounters between police officers, suspects, and members of the public. They promote accountability and transparency, provide objective evidence for criminal prosecutions, and reduce citizen complaints and use-of-force incidents.
Allowing our police officers to wear body cameras when they are on-duty is pro-accuracy, pro-truth, and ultimately, pro-justice.
The decision to adopt body-worn camera technology is not just a good policy decision - it is consistent with our key democratic values and our commitment to accountability. These cameras are important tools to help us establish the truth. They can protect both our officers from specious allegations of wrongdoing and our citizens from overzealous officers using excessive force. This technology has been in use, successfully, elsewhere in Massachusetts and around the country for years now. Citizens have come to expect it, especially in serious use-of-force incidents. And they should. Denying our officers access to body cameras will only raise unnecessary suspicion about interactions between police and our citizens.”
Background on David Solet
A prosecutor for twenty-four years, Solet has sought justice for victims of domestic violence, gun violence, narcotics trafficking, and public corruption. He was a longtime member of the office’s Special Investigations Unit, which prosecuted organized crime, then served as the first Chief of the Cyber Protection Unit, fighting online child exploitation. From 2019-2025, he served as the first Chief of the Middlesex County Cold Case Homicide Unit, investigating hundreds of unsolved homicides and dozens of unsolved sex assaults.
For his work, he was named Middlesex County Prosecutor of the Year in 2025, and has received numerous other awards from law enforcement organizations.
An honors graduate of Harvard Law School, Solet previously served as Chief Legal Counsel to the Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety. He is a Major in the JAG Corps of the United States Army Reserve, where he has been a defense attorney for soldiers, and represented victims of sexual assault. He is the proud father of two daughters, both graduates of Newton North High School, and now lives in Cambridge.
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