It’s well known that I am a bit of a socialmedia evangelist, the years since Katrina have shown me the power of using information technology to organize, share information, and build connectivity between people for the common good. As a result I tend to get more than a bit torqued when I run into the interface between technology and corruption, something that we’ve been getting an unhealthy dose of as “CameraGate” continues to unfold.
As Varg over at The Chicory said the other day:
But you should have left the anything having to do with crime free of your insipid hands. Because it’s something folks will quite likely pay attention to. They poke around and look into something like that. Especially after you tell an angry crowd of 5000 citizens that they are going to be an intricate part of your crime-fighting focus. People tend to get angrier after being promised something that ended up shrouded in questionable dealings.
And it amazes me that, when you knew you were meddling in the affairs of criminal justice and people’s lives were at stake, it may have been prudent for you to at least ensure the cameras worked. It certainly would have increased your chances of getting away with it. Because it wouldn’t have incited so many people to call attention to it. They may have let it slide if some high profile results had been rendered by your scam. Citizens are easily pleased like that.
Now the latest news hits- Dell Computers CEO Michael Dell will have to testify, per the Judge. The Austin Business Journal reports:
A New Orleans judge is ordering Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell to give a sworn deposition concerning his knowledge of the Round Rock company’s deal to provide crime cameras to the city of New Orleans, according to several published reports on Monday.
The same judge also set a hearing to determine if Dell Inc. should be held in contempt for failing to disclose corporate communications that show it sold camera casings to New Orleans in 2004, about two years earlier than originally thought.
At issue is a set of lawsuits facing Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) that accuse the company of participating in unfair business practices and selling cameras through a contract with the state of Louisiana that did not allow for the sale of such equipment. Southern Electronics and Active solutions–two companies that previously provided the city of New Orleans with crime cameras–filed suit against the city and Dell. In that suit, the plaintiffs claim that Dell conspired with a former New Orleans tech chief and city contractors to steal their business model. In a more recent development, the city of New Orleans last month also filed suit against Dell saying the computer-maker knew it was not following the parameters of its deal with the state.
Lets not flinch when shining a light on corruption, it is the only thing that can eradicate it if anything can. The fact that this is now reaching into these levels of power should ensure additional attention and hence a brighter spotlight, at least such is my hope.
-Loki, HumidCity Founder and Curator
Image: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com Rights: CC2.0
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah…Dell needs to steal Southern Electronics/Active Solutions business model. What a joke. Let’s see one company is a publicly held international manufacturer of leading computing solutions the others are … well…not!
@ latexdeputy;
You make an excellent point.
I wonder if it’s just Meffert & St. Pierre who took the idea and ran to Dell with it?
Why would Dell be restricted from selling N.O. these cameras cases?
And, if not a co conspiritor, why would they use false names for them?
This should be a very interesting series of unpleasant exposures for somebody….
Yes, LD makes a good point. And of course, all publicly held companies which are industry leaders are above reproach. They are all shining examples of truth and fair business practices and would certainly never, ever do anything illegal.
Like Enron.
City contracts are strange beasts and there are strict guidelines which need to be followed in obtaining them. Just because Dell is a tech giant does not mean that they would automatically get the contract. Now, Dell may simply be caught up in someone elses schemes here, but one would think they would have done their own homework to make sure everything was legal. “Oh, poor multinational industry leader! Did someone lie to you? Did they make you do a bad thing? You’re sorry aren’t you? And you won’t do it again, right?”
Forgive my cynicism, but Dell is not a five year old child. And LD’s post which implies that only large corporations like Dell are capable of innovation and success is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in years.
M,
My point was not that Dell are above reproach or the pinnacle of innovation or any such nonsense. My point is that the lawsuit Southern Electronics and Active Solutions have brought against Dell cites conspiracy to steal their business model. That I find ludacris.
The effectiveness or lack thereof in a business model has nothing to do with the size of a company or its corporate infrastructure. Many big companies now owe their success to inventing a new approach back when no one knew who they were. I don’t find it hard to credit either way.
BTW, Ludacris is a hip hop artist, I think you meant ludicrous.
It’s not ludicrous at all, but I think where we went wrong is the term “business model.” In fact it is the actual cameras which are the crux of this fiasco.
Dell has a State Purchasing Agreement with a dozen or so states which clearly defines what they can and cannot sell to government agencies. Cameras are strictly verboten under the terms of the contract. Despite this, in 2006, Meffert crony Mark St. Pierre supplied Dell with crime cameras through his Veracent company and Dell sold those cameras to the City of New Orleans, delivering them back to Veracent employees for installation. At the time, Veracent was in charge of New Orleans’ tech office operations.
It gets more intricate, so I quote NOLA.com:
E-mails show Dell employees had extended conversations with Veracent managers in Nagin’s technology office, trying to figure out the best way to mask the fact that they were selling cameras.
On Oct. 13, 2006, a week after Dell and Veracent filed their first invoice to the city purchasing office for crime cameras, Dell’s Louisiana purchasing coordinator Billy Ridge e-mailed Michael Charbonnet, who worked for Veracent in City Hall and also represented NetMethods in other cities.
“Can we use a different word than camera in the description, as we are not allowed to sell cameras on our contract? I’m thinking video capture module or something like that, ” Ridge wrote.
Charles Boorman, Dell’s former contract manager for public sales, e-mailed Ridge in April 2005 to warn him that “cameras are specifically excluded” from the 15-state compact, according to Boorman’s recent deposition.
Ridge sent an e-mail to Boorman on March 8, 2007, explaining how he avoided using the word “camera” to justify the sale.
“My term was a surveillance module, ” wrote Ridge, who went to work for NetMethods not long after sending that e-mail.
Dell ultimately settled on a different word: “eyeball.”
“I think the camera piece will be an issue on our current contract even though we said it wasn’t a camera but an eyeball, ” wrote Kim Fury, then Dell’s regional sales manager, in an e-mail referenced in the Boorman deposition.”
Still more cameras were illegally sold to Gretna and Lafayette, but through NetMethods instead of Veracent.
Also at issue is an “alleged” meeting between Dell CEO Michael Dell and Ray Nagin, and whether the crime cameras were discussed. Both Dell and Nagin claim this meeting never happened but at least one Dell employee, Scott Campbell, a Dell vice president, claims in a sworn statement that it did indeed take place “on or about June 21, 2004″ but that cameras were not discussed.
Now despite the whole act of sale being illegal, there is the fact that in 2004 the city actually had a contract with Southern Electronics and its partners, including Active Solutions, to install the crime cameras and SE delivered 49 of them in good working order but most of them were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Throughout 2005 SE, police and citizens alike were asking for the cameras to be fixed but the city hemmed and hawed on the funding. Then in 2006, New Orleans then-CTO Mark Kurt, a pal of Nagin and Meffert, and Meffert’s predecessor, found another company, (guess who) who could ‘replace’ the crime cameras at a substantial savings to the city and faster than SE and it’s partners. (I find the “faster than SE” rather ironic since they could have had the job done already had the city allowed them to.)
Now, Kurt and Meffert had access to the cameras, close ties to St Pierre and his companies and even closer ties to the Nagin administration, and at least one e-mail has surfaced in which Meffert claimed that “…Nagin would call CEO Michael Dell personally to get the camera sales moving…” If that doesn’t spell collusion, I don’t know what the hell does!
No, Dell did not initiate this Buttafiasco, but they are clearly in it up to their CD-ROM trays. After losing their recent deceptive practices suit to the tune of 3.5 million in January of this year, you can bet that Dell will soon be offering a wealth of knowledge to Judge Rose Ledet, and that heads will be rolling around Round Rock for the next few months.
I’m still curious as to why the cameras were excluded form the 15 state contracts in the first place.
@ M Styborski, do me a favor here…many of my friends refer to me as LD. Could Mister Deputy (Latex) get a different code name, please?
Good Grief!
Yes LD from now on ld will be ‘tex if I feel the need to shorten.
Issue One: I have axed Loki, through channels, to edit my last post as I made a glaring error. (Blogging and drinking don’t mix, kids!) I mentioned that Mark Kurt was Greg Meffert’s predecessor, when in fact Kurt was his successor.
Issue Two: Remember that Mark Kurt was one of the founding partners of Imagine Software, LLC, along with Mark St Pierre. It received the nickname ‘Imaginary Software’ in the media because it did not actually produce software. It was a consulting firm with one client: the City of New Orleans. You may remember that the company was also listed as the legal owner of the 53-foot Silicon Bayou yacht which Nagin was wined and dined aboard on more than one occasion.
Issue Three: Regarding the ban on cameras in the contract I have a theory.
At the time Dell had absolutely nothing to do with cameras or camera technology. Under the terms of the Western States Contracting Agreement there are all sorts of nifty clauses like this one: (This Agreement is) NOT intended to be used by State Agencies for the purchase of Microsoft products other than operating systems. and this one This agreement is NOT for the purchase of major, large hardware or hardware and software offerings. Individual units/configurations not to exceed $50,000 each. Equipment shall be defined as workstations, desktop, laptop (including Tablet PC’s and handheid (PDA) devices, servers, computing hardware, including upgrade components such as memory, storage drives and spare parts.
My guess is that it’s simply part of the give-and-take of any contract. The state promises to only buy Dell workstations and Dell promises not to get into other areas of commerce which might interfere with the profits of companies the state currently has contracts with. Except Dell broke the terms of the WSCA when they accepted and forwarded the cameras from and back to Veracent.
I know, I know, you ask “why the hell did Veracent need Dell to get involved in the first place?’ and my answer is because they were there. You see, Veracent couldn’t get the camera contract with the city unless other firms were allowed to compete with them including SE/AS. New Orleans was already covered by the WSCA contract between Louisiana and Dell. By funneling the cameras through Dell, Veracent essentially awarded itself a no-bid contract with the city. The only problems being that they may have stole the camera designs and “business model” from a company who previously held the crime camera contract and that the WSCA prohibited Dell from getting into the camera game.
Issue Four: Ludicrous. It’s origins are from the 17th century Latin ludicrus which is an evolution of ludicrum meaning “stage play.” Interestingly, in the mid 1940’s the French gave us ludique which we bastardized into ludic which means a spontaneous, undirected playfulness and comes also from the Latin ludere to play and ludus sport.
So it looks as if ‘tex was indeed correct and the whole thing really is ludicrous, as in, a stage play. Now we, the audience, get to settle in and watch as the actors get their comeuppance in the third act.
Pass the popcorn!
Thank you for that detailed and insightful post to make things quite clear…
“Very clear, sir.
As clear as an unmuddied lake, sir.
As an azure sky of deepest summer.
You can depend on me….”
– Little Alex
Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well… I was just this moment listening to that very soundtrack! You should do the same!
“Come with uncle and hear all proper!
Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones.
You are invited.”
-ibid.
~m. styborski – oh dear Lord, the leap year scores.. were they testing how many New Orleans kids knew how often a leap year occurs?
if it wasn’t so incredibly pathetic, i’d be laughing. *sigh*
drink up Shrines!
~steve, Oh Snap!
~my buddy L.D. how dull my life would be without your friendship.
but it seems someone has beaten you to the question..
some Monkey with a butcher knife…. :)
-term: Deja Vu!
Now on to bidniss:
(I apologize in advance if this post seems a tad confusing, because it is…)
Hooray! In his last ever State of the City address, Mayor Clarence Ray Nagin informed us that all 242 crime cameras in the city are repaired! Great news except ‘repaired’ does not necessarily mean ‘working.’ NOPD Chief Warren Riley says that sometimes 100% of the cameras work and other times it’s 80-85%. Riley’s explanation for the fluctuation in the numbers is that “it’s technology.” Sources in the NOPD state that the number is between 80-90% on average, but that when the cameras are down it’s only for “brief” periods of time. What exactly does “brief” mean? The Jurassic period was “brief” as time goes, but it still lasted 45 million years.
WDSU’s Travers Mackel reported that a high-ranking insider in the New Orleans tech office provided him with a chart showing that as of May 4th, 2009, (just over two weeks before Ray-Ray’s bold statement,) only 109 of 218 total crime cameras were working. Now, you don’t have to be good at math to figure out that’s just 50%! An e-mail included with the chart states that “once a maintenance contract is in place, work will begin on the cameras.” (Remember that statement folks!)
So, we’ve had the cameras for almost three years and we didn’t think to buy a maintenance contract? Well, the city currently may or may not have a contract with Ciber, Inc to maintain the cameras. Ciber was allegedly awarded a contract in 2005, but in October of 2008 the existence of this contract was questioned by the city council. Nagin CAO Brenda Hatfield said that the original 2005 contract (which no one could seem to locate at the time) was extended through 2009 which is why it looked as if there were no contract. Huh?
It’s around this time that former city IG Robert Cerasoli began digging into the matter, requesting every document the city had relating to the crime cameras. And guess what? Not one single document mentioned Ciber, Inc. That’s pretty mysterious since they were paid nearly three-million dollars for camera maintenance in 2008. Want to know something even more mysterious? When all this started coming out in the press, then-CTO Mark Kurt resigned after only half a year on the job. He managed to land on his feet though, with a nice position at… you guessed it… Ciber, Inc which already had an unrelated 5.5 million dollar tech contract with the city. Kurt even checked with the State Ethics Board before jumping to Ciber and they said as long as he didn’t work on the New Orleans contract there shouldn’t be any problem. Now I don’t know what Marks current duties are at Ciber, but soon after he joined them, the “unrelated 5.5 million dollar contract” soon became a 36 million dollar contract which included operation and maintenance of New Orleans crime camera network.
Golly, that’s a co-inky-dink!
Also, the city may have been paying a Huntsville, AL firm, LSI Research, for the same work allegedly being done by Ciber. LSI was awarded the installation and operation contract for the cameras in 2007 by then-CTO Anthony Jones who has since been demoted in rank for falsifying his resumé and being an all-around bumble-fuck. Originally, LSI bid $49,900 to install just eight cameras. Later the contract was extended to cover 100 cameras. Now in Louisiana you must have a legal LA contractors license for projects over $50,000 which LSI did not have and the $100-below threshold bid and subsequent extension allowed then to circumvent filing for the license and paying any appropriate fees. Not only that, but LSI’s contract stated a per-camera cost of $6237.50 but numerous invoices show that the city paid $8500 per camera. Even Best buy doesn’t mark-up that steep!
And while CTO, Kurt moved the antenna array for the camera system and other city emergency services from a space on top of a downtown building which the buildings owner was donating to the city, to the top of One Shell Square at a cost to taxpayers of $4,000/month. Now the new space really only cost around $2,000/month, but it was rented from OSS by Veracent and sublet back to the city through another company. (Imagine Software, I think, but I am not certain.) Veracent was also getting $250,000/year for maintenance on the antenna array alone, which at times had been “fixed” with duct tape.
So here we have three companies, Veracent, LSI and Ciber, all being paid to maintain the crime camera network and just three weeks ago we find an e-mail stating that “once a maintenance contract is in place, work will begin on the cameras.” (I told you to remember that statement!) And then there we were two weeks later listening to Ray-Ray tell us that everything is fixed. Yeah, the fix is definitely in, Clarence. Who should know better than you.
Oh, and one last number for you: Three.
That is the total number of times in which crime camera footage has been used by the DA’s office in court as of November, 2008.