Homeland Security Minister orders report into body cams contract

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has called for a re­port in­to the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tract for body cam­eras and sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture is­sued un­der for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Speak­ing dur­ing a post-Car­ni­val me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the con­tract cost the coun­try about $100 mil­lion but did not give the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice full con­trol of the cam­eras. He said un­der Grif­fith, some 1,000 cam­eras were ac­quired through the im­prop­er ex­e­cu­tion of a con­tract. He said Grif­fith, as the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the po­lice ser­vice, did not ex­e­cute the con­tract.

“The body cam­eras were pur­chased for $3.4 mil­lion dol­lars and there was a Blue­tooth fea­ture added for $600,000. That’s a subto­tal of $4 mil­lion. We have a li­cens­ing and main­te­nance for the said cam­eras for the pe­ri­od 2021 to 2025 cost $22 mil­lion. So, the av­er­age cost of each one of those body cam­eras end­ed up be­ing $34,000 per unit,” he said.

“That’s just one as­pect. The body cam­era con­tract was in­ter­wo­ven with a GPS con­tract that al­ready ex­ist­ed in the TTPS and be­tween last year and this year, I’ve been called up­on to pay 100 mil­lion dol­lars for that con­tract. Is that val­ue for mon­ey?”

Asked if the award of the con­tract need­ed to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, Gue­var­ro said, “What I can tell you is that fol­low­ing the ini­tial ar­ti­cle that ap­peared on the Guardian, the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty con­tact­ed me and in­struct­ed me to sup­ply him with a re­port, which is be­ing done at this point in time.”

And while no time­line was giv­en, Gue­var­ro said the re­port should be com­plet­ed soon. How­ev­er, he said there were as­pects of the con­tract the TTPS could have han­dled and did not need ex­ter­nal sup­port.

“I wasn’t sit­ting here at the time. So, you need to ask that where it’s sup­posed to go. With me, I would not sign a con­tract to bur­den the tax­pay­ers with that hefty fee, know­ing that I have the ex­per­tise in-house.”

He added that a li­cens­ing fee al­so meant when the con­tract end­ed the cam­eras could not be used, liken­ing it to an un­paid ca­ble bill, where the box re­mains in the hands of the own­er, who now can’t watch any­thing.

Gue­var­ro said af­ter that con­tract, his pre­de­ces­sor, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, be­gan the process of procur­ing some 3,000 cam­eras. That $24.9 mil­lion con­tract was can­celled last year by the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to save mon­ey he said, as on­ly 17. 9 per cent of po­lice of­fi­cers used body cams as at June last year.

“So, at this time, we are again look­ing at the pro­cure­ment of body cam­eras and we have be­gun to get sam­ples where per­sons would tell us, well lis­ten, this is some­thing that could work for you. But what we are look­ing for is some­thing that we can ad­min­is­trate our­selves. Be­cause it makes no sense I pay $3.4 mil­lion for 750 cam­eras and then over the next how much years, I pay a cou­ple mil­lion dol­lars for the li­cens­ing. So at this time, one of the things I’m look­ing at is to see meth­ods and means of reap­pro­pri­at­ing those de­vices through an­oth­er li­cens­ing type arrange­ment, which we can ad­min­is­trate,” Gue­var­ro said.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, how­ev­er, Grif­fith ac­cused Gue­var­ro of em­bark­ing on an­oth­er witch-hunt against him.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, in­stead of try­ing to find ways to en­sure that body cam­eras could be in­stalled and used by po­lice of­fi­cers, he yet again comes up with red her­rings to speak about a pro­cure­ment process that I had be­cause I did what was re­quired. I did my job and I did it well and that seems to be a prob­lem with se­nior per­sons, cer­tain se­nior per­sons in the po­lice ser­vice and even the line min­is­ter.”

He then trained his guns on Alexan­der, ques­tion­ing un­der what au­thor­i­ty he re­quest­ed a re­port in­to the con­tract.

“Roger Alexan­der, you’re no longer a po­lice of­fi­cer. You are ask­ing for a re­port of a mat­ter be­cause you be­lieve that it had ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty? What are you ask­ing for a re­port for? You’re not a po­lice of­fi­cer. If there was a mat­ter of ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty, you will think that af­ter six years, af­ter four po­lice com­mis­sion­ers af­ter me, some­body would have been ar­rest­ed, some­body would have been charged, some name would be called.”

Grif­fith said this is yet an­oth­er at­tempt at sul­ly­ing his name, re­call­ing the var­i­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the is­su­ing of firearm user’s li­cences dur­ing his tenure as po­lice com­mis­sion­er.