CoP defends officers; blames flawed contracts for body camera shortfall

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has come to the de­fence of of­fi­cers amid what he de­scribes as “bla­tant mis­truths” be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed about their al­leged re­fusal to wear body cam­eras, as well as claims that he has failed to en­force the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Re­spond­ing to as­ser­tions by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith that he (Grif­fith) pro­cured 1,200 body cam­eras for the TTPS dur­ing his tenure be­tween Au­gust 2018 and Au­gust 2021, Gue­var­ro chal­lenged Grif­fith to ac­count for con­tracts which he said left the TTPS “mil­lions of dol­lars in debt.”

In an au­dio mes­sage cir­cu­lat­ed yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said, “The re­al­i­ty is that there were three body-worn cam­era pro­cure­ments.”

He ex­plained that the first in­volved the ac­qui­si­tion of 750 cam­eras from a lo­cal com­pa­ny, which were dis­trib­uted across polic­ing di­vi­sions but are no longer op­er­a­tional af­ter the TTPS ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract.

Ac­cord­ing to Gue­var­ro, that pro­cure­ment was made un­der an im­prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed con­tract signed by a TTPS em­ploy­ee, rather than the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer at the time.

“Maybe if the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer had done his job, prop­er­ly ex­am­ined the con­tract and signed it, then the TTPS would not be in its cur­rent po­si­tion of be­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in debt,” Gue­var­ro said.

He said ven­dors have since been con­tact­ing the TTPS al­most week­ly seek­ing pay­ment.

Gue­var­ro said the sec­ond pro­cure­ment in­volved 250 cam­eras ac­quired dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure, but with­out a man­age­ment plat­form.

“This meant any of­fi­cer could turn the cam­era on, turn it off and delete footage them­selves,” he said.

He added that the de­vices were deemed un­suit­able for op­er­a­tional de­ploy­ment and were sub­se­quent­ly re­pur­posed for train­ing at the Po­lice Acad­e­my.

As a re­sult, Gue­var­ro said, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 cam­eras for which tax­pay­ers are still pay­ing can­not be used op­er­a­tional­ly. He said this left the TTPS with 180 cam­eras ac­quired from an in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­er. While these de­vices are func­tion­al, they lack a cen­tral stor­age sys­tem, re­quir­ing footage to be man­u­al­ly ex­tract­ed from each de­vice on a dai­ly ba­sis.

Gue­var­ro said of­fi­cers can face dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion for fail­ing to use these 180 cam­eras when is­sued.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing lim­it­ed re­sources with­in the ser­vice, he said, “We do not have much, but we are us­ing what we do have.”

Ad­dress­ing the pro­cure­ment of a prop­er cam­era man­age­ment sys­tem that was in­tend­ed to ac­com­pa­ny the ac­qui­si­tion of 3,000 de­vices, Gue­var­ro said the process was dis­con­tin­ued due to con­trac­tu­al dif­fi­cul­ties.

“It is not like the TTPS can just walk in­to a store and pur­chase body-worn cam­eras,” he said.

“Pub­lic pro­cure­ment is metic­u­lous and time-con­sum­ing. While it is my de­sire to have every of­fi­cer is­sued with a de­vice to pro­mote ac­count­abil­i­ty to the pub­lic, we must al­so be mind­ful of the over­all fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion re­quire­ments.”

Gue­var­ro said the pro­cure­ment process has since been restart­ed and up­dates will be pro­vid­ed.

In­sist­ing that the TTPS was left “in debt and tied in­to con­tracts that even fu­ture com­mis­sion­ers will still have to pay,” he said the ser­vice re­mains com­mit­ted to mod­erni­sa­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty, but in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner.

In an in­ter­view last week, Gue­var­ro al­so not­ed that while the cam­eras are owned by the TTPS, he does not have ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol over the sys­tem.

“Yes, I’m the own­er. I’m the user. But some­body else is con­trol­ling it,” he said.

He added that the us­able cam­eras are dis­trib­uted dai­ly on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis to of­fi­cers from var­i­ous op­er­a­tional units across polic­ing di­vi­sions, in­clud­ing the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol.