How Did MCPS School Buses Get Cameras Mounted on Outside? #NoRFP #NoBid

Below are screen shots from the July 7, 2016, Montgomery County Council Memorandum on School Bus Safety Cameras.  These bullet points explain how MCPS and Montgomery County Police selected Force Multiplier Solutions (FXS) to equip MCPS school buses with stop arm cameras.

The company was selected based on a referral from a colleague, meetings with MCPS and the Police Department, and finally a trip by MCPS and Police Department staff to Dallas, Texas to meet with Rick Sorrells, the Dallas School Superintendent. 

In April of 2018, Rick Sorrrells, the man that MCPS and the Police representatives met with in 2015, plead guilty to accepting $3 million in bribe and kickback payments to secure contracts with Force Multiplier Solutions (FXS).  Force Multiplier Solutions ceased to operate as a business after the FBI made numerous arrests related to bribes and kickbacks.

The Force Multiplier Solutions cameras are still in use on MCPS school buses.  The employees of the company simply changed the name and continued to collect the citation revenue out of the same Virginia office. Citation revenue is funneled through a website based out of a house in Louisiana. 

MCPS Superintendent Jack R. Smith did not inform the Montgomery County Board of Education that Force Multiplier Solutions had been shut down.

The screen shots below explain how MCPS cameras came to use this bus camera scheme and why the cameras were installed without a Request For Proposal (RFP) or bids from competitors.