Reporting
Dave Savini
Oct 30, 2008 9:11 pm US/Central
Police sources told CBS 2's Dave Savini that taxpayers got ripped off and that all the cameras and software in the world are meaningless if they don't work.
CBS 2 Investigators sifted through government contracts and confidential emails revealing how Project Shield's pot of money was dished out. The trail led to bankrupt companies, phony addresses and falsified documents -- not the words you want to hear when talking about terrorism and your tax dollars.
Project Shield continues to be touted as a state-of-the-art video surveillance system. Federal tax dollars paid for it to be installed in squad cars and on towers throughout Cook County.
"It's a waste of taxpayer money," said East Hazel Crest Police Chief Ray Robertson. "I can't get it to work on a daily basis."
Despite numerous critics and complaints, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger has been defending its $40 million dollar price tag.
Here's how Project Shield is supposed to work. Cameras are mounted on buildings or inside squad cars and then can record emergency scenes or traffic stops. The video is streamed into cyberspace on a secure network so other law enforcement agencies can view it or possibly assist. But the system fails repeatedly.
Robertson said cameras are in two of his squad cars and at two outdoor locations, but they are plagued with software problems.
The 2 Investigators found Project Shield has failed repeatedly in Streamwood, Schiller Park, Glenview, Niles, Evergreen Park, Robbins, Thornton and Phoenix. It got so bad that several police departments ripped the gear out of their squad cars, including in Wilmette, River Forest and Country Club Hills.
"It doesn't make any sense to me at all," said Michael McGee.
His company, Responder Systems, was a subcontractor. Police chiefs said his gear worked, yet he was cut from Project Shield. Now, insiders say that equipment is not being maintained, creating even more waste.
Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica said there is a federal investigation into how these tax dollars have been spent.
"It's very much a program that's fraught with individuals who have taken advantage of the unregulated pot of cash," he said.
The 2 Investigators uncovered confidential records raising questions about how tax dollars were used. A confidential e-mail between contractors in 2005 indicated they needed to find $870,000 worth of work for certain minority- and women-owned businesses even though the contractors had "great difficulty finding work for them to do." It added: "We will make it happen."
Mentioned in the email was SOS Quality Systems run by Sheketta Cox. She confirmed her ties to Stroger -- providing a computer and doing consulting for him when he was her 8th Ward alderman.
Cox said her now-closed company was rushed into the project because of her minority status. She said a Project Shield subcontractor paid her and she turned around and put that same company's employees on her payroll.
One of those employees was given a 1099 tax record listing a church as his employer for the homeland security project. Church officials said they never heard of Project Shield and wonder how an 8th ward businesswoman obtained their federal employer identification number.
Dan Coughlin is the county employee in charge of this money. He said the county has nothing to do with the subcontractors and blames all the failures on IBM, the main contractor.
"I'm disturbed that Phase 1 and Phase 2 did not live up to what we expected -- period," Coughlin said.
The Stroger administration claimed it was strictly IBM's choice to pick the subcontracts and monitor them. Officials for IBM declined comment.
Sources close to Project Shield confirm federal authorities have begun asking questions. County officials argue the technical problems started under the previous administration, under Stroger's father, the previous board president.
With $22 million already spent and another $17 million earmarked for future equipment, the county claims one day everything will be better.
Source: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/Project.Shield.homeland.2.852986.html