SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

A pri­vate CCTV cam­era com­pa­ny has been pro­vid­ing its live feed, with the con­sent of its cus­tomers, to the po­lice to help com­bat crime in Tu­na­puna.

In ear­ly March, the Tu­na­puna busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty launched the Ea­gle Eye project aimed at at­tack­ing crime in the bustling town cen­tre us­ing 100 pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras placed at strate­gic lo­ca­tions.

The cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty net­work was rolled out three months ago by the pres­i­dent of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil (TSCC) Neil Boodoos­ingh and mem­bers of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce who were tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

Short­ly af­ter, com­mu­ni­ties in Tu­na­puna af­fect­ed by the coun­try’s ris­ing crime wave be­gan to buy in­to the project af­ter learn­ing that video streams from these cam­eras were linked to a mon­i­tor­ing room at the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion to help po­lice of­fi­cers solve crime and pro­vide a safer en­vi­ron­ment for them.

The Ea­gle Eye cam­eras that are owned by Cit­i­zen Sur­veil­lance Net­work (CSN) have month­ly costs rang­ing from $66 to $199. The cheap­est rate is $2.20 a day. This month­ly main­te­nance fee cov­ers re­pairs and re­place­ment of the cam­eras should they be­come faulty.

The homes of res­i­dents in five com­mu­ni­ties in Tu­na­puna—St John’s Road where mem­bers of the Re­sis­tance gang op­er­ate, Di­a­mond Dri­ve, El Do­ra­do Gar­dens, Kara­math Street, and Col­lege Road—have al­ready been out­fit­ted with cam­eras, en­abling po­lice of­fi­cers at the sta­tion to mon­i­tor their premis­es and re­spond to a crime in progress. Soon cam­eras will be set up at Maitagual, St Thomas and Green streets to pro­vide a safer com­mu­ni­ty for res­i­dents.

The in­stal­la­tion of the cam­eras came weeks af­ter elec­tron­ic equip­ment, in­clud­ing wire­less routers and 23 CCTV cam­eras used by crim­i­nals to mon­i­tor law en­force­ment agents were dis­cov­ered il­le­gal­ly mount­ed on util­i­ty poles at Monte Grande in Tu­na­puna and Bas­an­ta Trace, St John’s Road in St Au­gus­tine. It is be­lieved the sur­veil­lance equip­ment was in­stalled over time by a crim­i­nal gang.

Roll­out in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties com­ing

Al­most three months af­ter the launch of the Ea­gle Eye project, head of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Richard Smith said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was mov­ing to have this ini­tia­tive im­ple­ment­ed in oth­er po­lice sta­tions and com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, as it sent a mes­sage to rob­bers that they were be­ing mon­i­tored and record­ed.

Video footage cap­tured can be ten­dered as ev­i­dence in court by the po­lice. He said it was one way the pub­lic is fight­ing back.

“This is our coun­try and we should fight for it. We should not give it up to the crim­i­nals. It shows that peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in se­cur­ing them­selves and their prop­er­ties and now they are in­ter­est­ed in help­ing us gath­er ev­i­dence against these crim­i­nals so we can get them. This is a step in the right di­rec­tion,” Smith told the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

“I could give the as­sur­ance that the footage from the cam­eras would not be used for any­thing clan­des­tine or to ex­tort mon­ey from any­body in any way.”

Smith said his of­fi­cers would work pro­fes­sion­al­ly to gath­er ev­i­dence and con­duct their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Tu­na­puna is one of five po­lice sta­tions that falls un­der Smith’s di­vi­sion. The oth­er four sta­tions, Mara­cas St Joseph, Arou­ca, Pi­ar­co, and St Joseph, are al­so in­ter­est­ed in mon­i­tor­ing rooms.

He said the footage cap­tured by these cam­eras had led to a few ar­rests and even helped in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a de­com­pos­ing corpse.

“It is bear­ing some fruits. We have seen a re­duc­tion in crime on the main streets in Tu­na­puna where the cam­eras are lo­cat­ed,” said Smith.

Of the 400 reg­is­tered busi­ness­es in Tu­na­puna, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent have in­vest­ed in the cam­eras.

“Peo­ple (com­mu­ni­ties) have been show­ing a lot of in­ter­est in this Ea­gle Eye project,” Smith said.

Footage from the cam­eras is al­so fed in­to the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre in Mal­oney.

Smith said he felt proud that the project was pi­lot­ed in his di­vi­sion and was grab­bing the in­ter­est of oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and po­lice sta­tions.

“A lot of my col­leagues in the oth­er di­vi­sions called to find out more about it,” he said.

Of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s ten po­lice di­vi­sions, Smith said Cen­tral, West­ern and North-East­ern di­vi­sions had ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the es­tab­lish­ment of mon­i­tor­ing rooms in their po­lice sta­tions.

Smith said he has giv­en Boodoos­ingh full clear­ance to es­tab­lish mon­i­tor­ing rooms at oth­er sta­tions once com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es sub­scribe to the ini­tia­tive.

“We can all ben­e­fit from this. We can make it an each one teach one project,” Smith said.

He said the St Joseph and Barataria po­lice sta­tions were first in line to es­tab­lish mon­i­tor­ing rooms fol­lowed by the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion mu­nic­i­pal po­lice. Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion would be next.

“Princes Town Sta­tion as well. It’s spread­ing,” he added.

Smith said hav­ing video footage at their fin­ger­tips made their jobs eas­i­er.

“There would be less bu­reau­cra­cy to get it (video footage),” he said.

The po­lice re­ly on footage from the State’s CCTV cam­eras when a crime or ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent oc­curs with­in prox­im­i­ty of the sur­veil­lance unit. Some­times, the footage is hazy or the cam­era is out of ser­vice.

At every po­lice town meet­ing, Smith said, com­mu­ni­ties were in­formed of the Ea­gle Eye ini­tia­tive.

In the com­ing weeks, he said, Boodoos­ingh will in­tro­duce in com­mu­ni­ties “su­per sirens and strobe lights” which is an­oth­er crime-fight­ing mea­sure that can be ac­ti­vat­ed by the pub­lic through a What­sApp group mes­sage that will feed back to po­lice sta­tions to alert them of a crime in progress. A one-time pay­ment of $299 will be charged for the siren and lights.

Break­ing point to deal with crim­i­nals

Shar­ing more in­sight in­to the grow­ing ini­tia­tive, Boodoos­ingh, the own­er of Fred’s Mar­ket­ing, said cit­i­zens have reached a break­ing point with the crim­i­nals’ scathing at­tacks. “Peo­ple start­ed in­vest­ing in the cam­eras be­cause they re­alised they need­ed help,” he said. “We are liv­ing in a jail. They are scared.”

He said the crimes com­mit­ted in the coun­try are not out of des­per­a­tion but “vice” by men who don’t want to find mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment. In­stead, they choose to ter­rorise and bru­talise cit­i­zens for their hard-earned cash and valu­ables. “That is the re­al­i­ty of it. There is no­body in this coun­try that is suf­fer­ing in such a state where they have to go out and hold up some­body to put food on the ta­ble,” he added. In some cas­es, he said, cit­i­zens have been let­ting their guard down. “We have to be­come hard tar­gets.”

Boodoos­ingh said he no­ticed that the af­flu­ent com­mu­ni­ties were hes­i­tant to pay for the cam­eras since they pre­ferred pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms to guard their premis­es and do night pa­trols. Com­mu­ni­ties in crime hotspot ar­eas have been com­ing on board. “They are the ones most­ly af­fect­ed by crime.”

He said be­fore the ad­vent of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic they need­ed $400,000 to start the project with 100 Ea­gle Eye cam­eras. They ap­proached the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and cor­po­rate cit­i­zens for help but were turned away. “I re­turned to our sup­pli­er CSN and we came up with the idea to charge cus­tomers a main­te­nance fee in­stead.” It was their on­ly work­able plan. He said the Tu­na­puna busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty em­braced the move.

To set up the servers and mon­i­tors at the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion, Boodoos­ingh said it cost close to $100,000. Lead­ing up to Christ­mas last year, 70 cam­eras were in­stalled. Then it in­creased to 100 in March. “Now we have close to 300 cam­eras in the area.”

PM Row­ley en­dors­es project

The project, he said, has been en­dorsed by the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. These cam­eras serve busi­ness­es and neigh­bour­hoods that ex­pe­ri­enced an up­surge in home in­va­sions, rob­beries, break-ins, and ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny.

He said, “These crim­i­nals op­er­ate as if the coun­try is theirs. They do what they want.”

He said while crim­i­nals had be­come em­bold­ened, cit­i­zens can’t take the law in­to their hands.

“We can’t say we would go the vig­i­lante way and arm every­body and come out and shoot up the place.”

Since the in­stal­la­tion of the cam­eras, Boodoos­ingh said, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties have dropped. “We are in a po­si­tion where we can­not give up to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments. We have to try some­thing.”

Out­side of Tu­na­puna, Boodoos­ingh said, neigh­bour­hoods in Mara­cas-St Joseph, Cou­va, Aranguez, Princes Town, Bam­boo Set­tle­ments 1 and 2, Bel­mont, San­gre Grande, Ch­agua­nas, En­deav­our, San Juan, Barataria and Ed­in­burgh 500 have signed up for the cam­eras. He said clients had the op­tion of blur­ring out im­ages on the cam­eras for their pri­va­cy.

He said, “If you don’t want part of your prop­er­ty to be seen by the of­fi­cers it could be blurred out.” How­ev­er, the cam­era will record every­thing.

Boodoos­ingh said his goal was to get all the po­lice coun­cils un­der one um­brel­la to re­duce the crime scourge.

Days af­ter Ea­gle Eye was launched, Boodoos­ingh spoke about the ini­tia­tive with Dr Row­ley dur­ing a Con­ver­sa­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter in Tu­na­puna.

Boodoos­ingh told the PM he had the en­tire dis­trict “cov­ered” and had re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls from busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and cham­bers for the ini­tia­tive to be im­ple­ment­ed in their com­mu­ni­ties.

“While cit­i­zens have ex­pressed their wor­ry that crime is out of con­trol and every­body is keep­ing score like a crick­et game, I am ask­ing you here tonight to al­low us to join and come un­der your (Na­tion­al) Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. I am will­ing to make this a na­tion­al ven­ture,” he had said.

He said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry had on­ly in­stalled cam­eras at junc­tions, high­ways, and egress points. Boodoos­ingh ap­pealed to Dr Row­ley to im­ple­ment this project in each of the ten po­lice di­vi­sions “and make it eas­i­er on the TTPS to ac­cess the footage.” He said these pri­vate cam­eras can could the gaps.

Dr Row­ley thanked Boodoos­ingh for his in­ter­ven­tion.

“When we looked at the num­bers and the cost of your op­er­a­tion, it would be con­sid­er­ably cheap­er than the State’s op­er­a­tion,” Dr Row­ley said.

The PM said the Gov­ern­ment “went out to put cam­eras at main junc­tions and cross­roads.”

When they went out for ten­der of the cam­eras, Row­ley, said there were two main bids. One was by TSTT whose bid was $330 mil­lion for 1,200 cam­eras. The oth­er bid was $80 mil­lion, which Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment went with.

The PM said, “TSTT has the Gov­ern­ment in court now, mak­ing a claim that the Gov­ern­ment is fight­ing for cam­eras that were so good that a head was found be­low a light post in Port-of-Spain.”

He added that the qual­i­ty of the footage from the cam­era was so poor “that you couldn’t tell who put down the head dey. But we were pay­ing over $1,000 a month for a cam­era like that.”

TSTT has brought ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings against the State seek­ing al­most $1 bil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for its ser­vices in man­ag­ing this coun­try’s CCTV net­work.

The com­pa­ny claimed the com­pen­sa­tion rep­re­sents un­paid fees for video sur­veil­lance ser­vices. The com­pa­ny claims it is owed al­most $751.8 mil­lion plus in­ter­est cal­cu­lat­ed at rates be­tween 5.8 and 8.3 per cent.

He said the num­ber of cam­eras Boodoos­ingh would have and its cov­er­age “would not be any­where in the ball­park of what the Gov­ern­ment pays to run 1,000 cam­eras.”

Dr Row­ley said he was de­light­ed to hear about the project and that they were solv­ing a prob­lem. “And I am sure it’s go­ing to be a whole lot cheap­er as you have me on board with you.”

Fol­low­ing this pub­lic meet­ing, Boodoos­ingh said in­struc­tions were passed “from the NSC” to Smith to work in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

“I re­ceived a call from Smith that we are now go­ing in­to all ar­eas, all neigh­bour­hoods,” he said.

The goal, he said, was to bring all po­lice coun­cils un­der one um­brel­la and re­duce crime that has the en­tire pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in fear.