TTPS releases specs for new body cam acquisition

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has of­fi­cial­ly is­sued an Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est (EOI) for body-worn cam­eras, seek­ing firms to sup­ply.

Ac­cord­ing to the EOI, the TTPS is seek­ing cam­eras equipped with GPS and Blue­tooth in­te­gra­tion, live-stream­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, LTE and Wi-Fi con­nec­tiv­i­ty, two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion and a min­i­mum bat­tery life of six hours. The de­vices must record in 1080p res­o­lu­tion, sup­port low-light con­di­tions and in­clude at least 32GB of stor­age.

The po­lice ser­vice is al­so seek­ing an ev­i­dence man­age­ment plat­form with re­mote ad­min­is­tra­tion, video man­age­ment and da­ta archiv­ing for at least two months.

In­ter­est­ed firms must demon­strate ex­pe­ri­ence sup­ply­ing and com­mis­sion­ing body-worn cam­era sys­tems, pro­vide client ref­er­ences and sub­mit fi­nan­cial state­ments cov­er­ing three con­sec­u­tive years be­tween 2022 and 2025. Com­pa­nies must al­so be reg­is­tered with the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion in the rel­e­vant cat­e­go­ry be­fore the sub­mis­sion dead­line.

Ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est must be sub­mit­ted by 1 pm on Ju­ly 22, af­ter which qual­i­fied firms will be in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the for­mal ten­der­ing process.

Ear­li­er this week, the TTPS sought to make clear it is not op­posed to body cam­eras, de­scrib­ing them as an es­sen­tial tool for pro­fes­sion­al, trans­par­ent and ac­count­able polic­ing which would sup­port in­ves­ti­ga­tions and court pro­ceed­ings while pro­tect­ing of­fi­cers from false al­le­ga­tions and strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence in polic­ing.

The pro­cure­ment process comes amid height­ened pub­lic scruti­ny of po­lice use of force fol­low­ing the killing of Joshua Sama­roo in Jan­u­ary. The emer­gence of CCTV footage from that in­ci­dent fu­elled re­newed calls for body-worn cam­eras, with sup­port­ers ar­gu­ing the tech­nol­o­gy could pro­vide an in­de­pen­dent record of po­lice-pub­lic in­ter­ac­tions and help re­solve dis­putes over what oc­curred dur­ing crit­i­cal in­ci­dents.