Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer 
Purdy and Forbes
BARELY A year after new sophisticated scanning equipment was installed at the island's main ports questions are being raised as to whether they are being compromised.
David W. Purdy, law enforcement development
advisor to the Jamaica Constabulary Force, believes there may have been deliberate acts to disable the X-ray machines at the shipping ports at critical periods.
CEASING TO WORK
"We now have the X-ray equipment ... all this sophisticated equipment that is available, but for some reason they keep ceasing to work because they pull the plug. Employees are not being monitored, supervised and held accountable and we constantly find the equipment being turned off, disabled and not used," he charged.
Asked by The Sunday Gleaner if he had evidence to back up his charge, the consultant said that while there was no solid evidence at hand, the available information "would indicate that it is clearly suggested." Getting hard evidence, he said, was very difficult, but on the other hand, "equipment that is constantly failing is suspect and when you keep repairing it and the next day it is turned off again or is not being used, that is suspect."
A.J. Forbes, senior vice-president in charge of security at the Port Authority of Jamaica, holds a sharply
different view of the situation at the transhipment port.
"I have not seen, heard, or know of anything to
suggest that that is happening, nor have I received any information from my people on the ground that would suggest that," he told The Sunday Gleaner in response to Mr. Purdy's charge.
There was a system in place, he said, that made it
difficult for the kind of sabotage suspected by the police consultant to take place. Among other things, he said, the security system at the port includes a chain of activities and persons that would intercept any such attempt. "It would take a tremendous effort to make that kind of inroad; and we always have back-up systems in place and the operators know that if it happens it can be identified," he asserted.
Mr. Forbes, a senior superintendent of police, on secondment to the Port Authority, acknowledged that there had been 'teething problems' with equipment failures occasionally. That difficulty, he said, was being addressed by having an engineer from the firm which manufactured the equipment now resident in Jamaica to handle such problems.
On the other hand, he said that he was 'not surprised' to learn of the allegation. Such 'rumours', he said, were often spread by "those among us who would do anything humanly possible to see those machines go who would do everything possible to blame the system because they do not want the machines there, because they are disrupting their way of life, preventing them from doing the things they used to do.
INSTALLED TO FIND CONTRABAND
The costly X-ray machines now at the main transhipment port were acquired port were acquired and installed to enhance the country's ability to detect guns, drugs and other contraband entereing and leaving the country.
Dave Purdy, a former police chief in several jurisdictions in the United States, has been in Jamaica for more than a year.
He has been advising the JCF on how to modernise its management structure and its efficiency in service delivery, among other matters.
