By Fran Spielman and Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — A $227,064 “mobile surveillance tower” — hastily purchased by the city under a no-bid contract to take advantage of an expiring federal transit security grant — helped Chicago Police officers control roving crowds of demonstrators and provocateurs and protect Metra trains during the NATO summit, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Manufactured by Dallas-based TerraHawk LLC, the patented technology is described in sole-source procurement documents as a “drivable mobile surveillance tower” that can be “deployed by one person” sitting inside the vehicle and “fully operational” within two minutes.
It looks like a van with an attached cab topped by a camera — called an “observation capsule” — that extends in the air to an “eye level of 25 feet.”
The TerraHawk has “infrared and conventional” surveillance-camera technology. It provides a 360-degree observation platform pivotal in mass transit incidents and in “detecting large crowd movements and disturbances officers on the ground” cannot see.
“It only takes one officer to operate the vehicle and platform, making the platform a unique force-multiplier,” Marvin J. Shear, executive officer of the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Administration, wrote in a March 7 letter attached to documents that justified the no-bid purchase.
“The TerraHawk will provide an essential new layer of security — deterrence, detection, response — for Chicago transit operations and assets. It will also provide Chicago Police Department special teams with enhanced capability to intervene in difficult situations. . . . It will provide command staff with confidence that officers can be quickly positioned to observe potential life-threatening situations in real-time and to immediately react and relay critical information to emergency response personnel.”
Chicago spent years searching for a mobile surveillance tower for use in “observing and controlling crowds” at Taste of Chicago and other events and disaster scenes, only to have trouble identifying both funding and suitable technology.
After settling on the TerraHawk this spring, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration rushed the sole-source purchase to take advantage of an expiring 2007 federal grant earmarked for mass transit security. The city hoped to use the new surveillance tool during the NATO summit.
The van the city ordered was not delivered in time for last week’s arrival of world leaders. But TerraHawk sent Chicago an identical “loaner vehicle and personnel” for use during the summit.
The TerraHawk, a $227,064 “mobile surveillance tower,” is equipped with infrared and conventional surveillance technology.
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