Po­lice say in­ves­ti­ga­tions are still on­go­ing in­to the 23 il­le­gal sur­veil­lance cam­eras that they re­cov­ered in Tu­na­puna last month.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­firmed that 13 cam­eras were re­cov­ered in Monte Grande, Tu­na­puna, while ten were found along St John’s Road, St Au­gus­tine.

The cam­eras had been il­le­gal­ly mount­ed on util­i­ty poles be­long­ing to the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), some in close prox­im­i­ty to le­git­i­mate se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras with­in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty net­work.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Head of In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tion, Suzette Mar­tin, yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was still in progress and no ar­rests have been made.

It is be­lieved that a crim­i­nal gang op­er­at­ing out of East Trinidad in­stalled the sur­veil­lance equip­ment over time. The ex­pan­sive set­up was re­port­ed­ly used to mon­i­tor po­lice sta­tions, track pa­trol times, record of­fi­cers’ ar­rivals and de­par­tures, ob­serve de­tainees be­ing processed and note the plates and lo­ca­tions of marked and un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cles.

The gang al­leged­ly used this in­for­ma­tion to pro­tect their mem­bers vis­it­ing the sta­tions as part of their bail arrange­ments.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, speak­ing about the dis­cov­ery of the cam­eras, said a team had been as­sem­bled to de­ter­mine “who, what, where, when, and un­der whose au­thor­i­ty” the cam­eras were in­stalled.

He de­scribed the team as “pow­er­ful” but did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.

Hinds con­firmed that T&TEC nev­er au­tho­rised the in­stal­la­tion of the cam­eras on its poles.

Hinds al­so men­tioned that the cy­ber­crime, so­cial me­dia, re­search, and le­gal units of the po­lice are pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, po­lice are con­duct­ing in­ter­views with res­i­dents in both com­mu­ni­ties to aid their in­quiry.

The po­lice, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with T&TEC, re­moved the cam­eras af­ter dis­cov­er­ing them.

Hinds said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so aimed to de­ter­mine if there were oth­er il­le­gal cam­eras mount­ed through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He de­nied ru­mours that the to­tal num­ber of cam­eras seized was 62, reaf­firm­ing that it was 23.