First in a series
When police Capt. Allen Azran was asked why City Hall chose a controversial, legally problematic Australian-based company to take charge of its red light camera system, his opening gambit was:
“We did a lot of research.”
And still Culver City chose Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc. from a slender field of putatively qualified companies.
At last week’s City Council meeting, members, seemingly casually, approved a fresh three-year renewed contract with a company doused by a multimillion dollar bribery scandal in Chicago – a story widely unknown in Culver City at the time.
Capt. Azran said the police department made a “thorough” inspection of the four applicants for a position that Redflex has commanded here for the past 12 years.
Xerox, ATS, Gatso and Redflex sought the contract. Gatso was dismissed immediately because “they were extremely expensive and had no real local ties”.
Capt. Azran said he visited Xerox’s downtown Los Angeles offices, ATS in Scottsdale, AZ, and Redflex in Phoenix.
This, however, was not going to be a tell-all moment regarding how the city chose scandal-marred Redfex, which had no trouble repeating its faithfulness vows at Culver City’s checkers.
At this point Capt. Azran held up a stop sign. “I am not sure how much of this I could or should really be sharing,” he said.
Even though the City Council and others maintained last week that not any part of City Hall’s runup to the new contract or its relationship with Redflex should be shielded from public view, that has not turned out to be the case.
Some information about their relationship has been firmly withheld from public view, without elaboration.
Relying only on previously disclosed, and presumably harmless, information, Capt. Azran said that for further illumination, a seeker should consult the bare admissions made last week in city staff’s public report to the Council.
(To be continued)
