As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the in­stal­la­tion of sev­er­al unau­tho­rised CCTV cam­eras in Tu­na­puna and St Au­gus­tine, di­vi­sion­al po­lice are at­tempt­ing to trace who bought the de­vices us­ing se­r­i­al num­bers.

The cam­eras were found at Bas­an­ta Trace, St John’s Road, St Au­gus­tine, and Monte Grande, Tu­na­puna, last Fri­day.

Of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, with help from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), re­moved the de­vices.

One po­lice source told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the unau­tho­rised cam­eras had se­r­i­al num­bers print­ed on their sides, which would en­able in­ves­ti­ga­tors to “back­track” where the cam­eras were pur­chased and who would have bought them.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, it’s not an of­fence to buy a cam­era; how­ev­er, it is an of­fence to in­stall an unau­tho­rised de­vice on a T&TEC pole and steal elec­tric­i­ty.

“We’re hop­ing that back­track­ing the de­vices to the whole­saler and con­tin­u­ing in­quiries on who pur­chased them, whether it was a com­pa­ny or pri­vate cit­i­zen, would bring us clos­er,” the of­fi­cer said. 

The of­fi­cer added that the unau­tho­rised cam­eras were first brought to the at­ten­tion of St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion of­fi­cer last June when of­fi­cers raid­ed the home of a man de­scribed as a “pri­or­i­ty of­fend­er” and dis­cov­ered four CCTV cam­eras point­ed at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

Po­lice said they re­ceived fur­ther in­tel­li­gence that sim­i­lar sur­veil­lance sys­tems were in­stalled in oth­er parts of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion but did not have suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion as to where ex­act­ly they were lo­cat­ed un­til re­cent­ly.

The source said of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered the cam­eras when they com­pared the num­ber of se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras on dif­fer­ent poles to the num­ber of video streams re­ceived in the po­lice Op­er­a­tional Cen­tre (OC), room.

“From there, the dis­crep­an­cy was dis­cov­ered where we would on­ly get three live streams at a giv­en cor­ner, but yet we’re ob­serv­ing six cam­eras when we vis­it the area on the street,” the of­fi­cers said. 

Po­lice be­lieve gangs were us­ing the cam­eras to spy on of­fi­cers. 

In 2015, of­fi­cers of the Ari­ma CID re­port­ed­ly re­moved unau­tho­rised cam­eras that were point­ed at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion.

In Oc­to­ber 2017, po­lice re­moved il­le­gal cam­era con­nec­tions from Tem­ple Street in El So­cor­ro which were fixed to util­i­ty poles and trees.