Four companies have already been disqualified from the bidding process to supply cameras for the state’s military police uniforms. The information was released by the Bahia Public Security Secretariat (SSP-Ba) this Wednesday (18). Until then, the department had only informed the disqualification of the first and second companies, and it was public knowledge that the third placed company in the notice was being evaluated.
According to SSP-Ba, the third company was disqualified after failing the proof of concept – security camera performance assessment – and the fourth company did not present the mandatory equipment. The first classified was disqualified after analyzing the documentation and the second also failed the proof of concept. A fifth company has already been called by the department and will have the documents analyzed. The date of the procedure and the name of the recipient were not informed.
Asked about details of the disqualifications, SSP-Ba informed that the list of mandatory equipment is included in the bidding notice for bodycams – as the cameras are called -, however, the document is offline. Therefore, the report was also unable to verify which evaluation phases companies are subjected to.
For Wagner Moreira, member of the State Human Rights Council, the civil society arm that monitors the bidding and the choice of the supplier company, the rigorous evaluation is positive. However, it is necessary to recognize that the lack of transparency in the process, such as the difficulty in accessing the notice, is a problem.
Wagner explains that the rigor in the evaluation is positive to avoid making the same mistakes observed in cities like São Paulo, which adopted the equipment, reduced police lethality, but faced difficulties in accessing the camera images and ensuring that they were not edited, for example.
“In the last operation in Santos [São Paulo], which involved several clashes, the MP and the defender’s office had difficulties in accessing the images generated by the cameras. From a practical point of view, only four of the images placed will be able to be used in the process, because for the legal process, there is a stage that for us is fundamental, called the Custody of Evidence Law. It’s important for us to know whether that image came from that camera, was edited or not, the moment of triggering”, explains Wagner.
Also according to Wagner, none of the companies evaluated in Bahia were able to prove the Chain of Custody of the Test, which is covered by the law he cited. According to the Fogo Cruzado Institute, which maps the rates of armed violence in Salvador and 17 other municipalities in Bahia, 21 deaths were recorded as a result of police operations in the state in the first 17 days of this month of October. There were also 28 shootings of the same type.
SSP-Ba launched the bidding notice for body cameras in April this year. From the selection of the company and signing of the contract, there is a period of 60 days for the first 1,100 cameras to be delivered. After this, the police will also undergo a period of training on the streets.
The report tried to hear from a representative of the Instituto Fogo Cruzado and the Black Initiative to find out how she evaluates the bidding process for bodycams, but the source was unable to answer the questions until the publication of this report.
