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Bumper-to-bumper traffic inches over the Interstate 10 Mississippi River bridge. A tugboat pushes several coal-laden barges past the Port of Greater Baton Rouge. A steady stream of people flows into offices and restaurants downtown. A man clutching a soft drink and snacks drives away from a Gardere Lane convenience store.

From Don Evans’ computer in the basement of the governmental building on St. Louis Street, where he monitors crime cameras hidden throughout the area, it appears to be a quiet day in the city.

“These cameras work,” says Evans, the city’s information technology director. “What’s in New Orleans isn’t here.”

New Orleans’ troubled crime camera program is mired in a federal investigation that’s also directed scrutiny at Baton Rouge.

A lawsuit by Southern Electronics Inc. and subcontractor Active Solutions, which worked on New Orleans’ initial system, alleges Greg Meffert and the people he brought in while New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s technology director used their positions at City Hall to “misappropriate” the system developed by the companies. The suit, filed last year in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, also alleges Meffert and his associates “conspired” with Dell Inc. to sell the system to New Orleans and other cities.

Meffert and Nagin, who also is listed among the defendants, have denied any wrongdoing and have sought to have the claims dismissed. Dell also has disputed the allegations.

And excerpts from Meffert’s 1,000-page deposition indicate a Hawaiian vacation Nagin, Meffert and their families took in 2004 partly was paid for by NetMethods, a company owned by city tech contractor Mark St. Pierre. St. Pierre worked for Meffert in the private sector before 2002, when both men went to work at City Hall.

According to news reports, Meffert, in his role as a public official, promoted friends’ work in New Orleans to counterparts in other cities—even when that work had been substantially done by others. Meffert also reportedly helped friends, including St. Pierre, get work installing crime cameras in Baton Rouge, Houston and Chicago.

In one e-mail, an employee of NetMethods—a company formed by St. Pierre in mid-2004 to sell services, cameras and video surveillance and other systems—asked Meffert to set up a “mayor-to-mayor” meeting to pitch crime cameras to Baton Rouge officials. Meffert replied, “Totally, and tell me if/when I need to do anything. Mayor will take 10 minutes to do that if you give me enough notice … let’s get it!”

Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden says that meeting didn’t happen; still, the city purchased 58 cameras from NetMethods. St. Pierre did not respond to phone messages and e-mails seeking comment. And federal investigators will not discuss whether the investigation has been extended to Baton Rouge unless charges are filed.

Holden spearheaded the $3.5 million surveillance camera system project approved by the Metro Council in October 2007. Holden says Evans and Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff met with vendors and made technology recommendations, which included crime cameras, ShotSpotter gunshot audio sensors, wi-fi routers and antennas, and they purchased the equipment through a state contract.

According to the State Purchasing Office’s latest vendor list, city officials chose NetMethods to maintain the system from a list of three state-approved vendors for surveillance products contracts. The others were Baton Rouge-based La Tech and New Orleans-based Active Solutions.

After news of the New Orleans investigation surfaced, Holden instructed Evans and LeDuff to check the city’s camera system and purchasing procedures and to keep a closer eye on the system and NetMethods.

“We have not had the problems they were having in New Orleans at all,” Holden says. “We have a system of checks and balances between the chief and information officer. They [NetMethods] went through the bidding process, and there’s nothing we can do to change that process as long as they adhere to the city’s standards. We really don’t have a problem with the company itself.”

LeDuff also credits the ShotSpotter gunshot audio sensors—which provide wide-area acoustic surveillance that detects and pinpoints gunfire and explosive discharges within seconds—for deterring crime. He says he’s never met Meffert or St. Pierre, and the idea to bring ShotSpotter to Baton Rouge originated from a demonstration he attended in Washington, D.C.

“We don’t have any issues like the issues going on in New Orleans,” he says. “It’s all about fighting the crime here.”

But high-tech crime fighting is expensive—and lucrative. Some 51.9% of the city’s 2009 budget is dedicated to public safety.

A cost analysis of Baton Rouge’s surveillance system—also called the security canopy—shows that about eight square miles of ShotSpotter coverage costs $1.23 million, or $154,162 per square mile. One crime camera costs $13,638, and one wi-fi unit with a router and antenna costs $8,397.

Baton Rouge already has 58 anti-terrorist cameras—purchased from NetMethods and obtained with an $867,000 Homeland Security grant—to monitor potential terrorist threats to critical infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security had input on camera locations, restricted use to monitoring security threats and empowered law enforcement officials to control the cameras.

Carlo MacDonald, then-president of Verge Wireless and a former Baton Rouge tech contractor, questions the Capital City’s heavy investment in wi-fi networking when his company already had invested $150,000 in Baton Rouge’s first wi-fi access in the downtown area in early 2003. Although it was only a square mile of service, MacDonald says the city could have expanded existing wi-fi.

Evans maintains MacDonald wanted to commercialize the network, while city officials only wanted to use it for public service. [Telemedicine recently was added on a pilot basis.] MacDonald agrees he used the system for commercial gain, but anyone could access it for free or for pay.

In early 2004, MacDonald says he met in New Orleans with Christopher Drake—whose records show claimed to be an employee in the “City of New Orleans, Mayor’s Office of Technology”—to propose a similar wi-fi system for the warehouse district. MacDonald worked as a subcontractor on that city’s camera project from 2004-06. He says it took most of the first year for him to discover Drake actually was an employee of Imagine Software, a consulting company owned by St. Pierre that had only one customer—the city of New Orleans.

Drake worked at the firm from August 2002 to August 2004, according to a seven-page affidavit from the lawsuit. Early in Drake’s employment with NetMethods, which lasted from August 2004 to mid-2006, his paychecks came from Imagine. MacDonald says by the time he realized Drake’s role, he wasn’t being paid in a timely manner, and Imagine began representing itself as the company associated with the project. A disgusted MacDonald left the project, and St. Pierre’s company—operating under a new name, Veracent—took over MacDonald’s work.

After NetMethods was awarded Baton Rouge’s anti-terrorist camera job in 2006, MacDonald also abandoned wireless efforts in downtown. MacDonald and Southern Electronics contend NetMethods muscled them out of the Baton Rouge and New Orleans jobs.

“We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into that downtown system,” MacDonald says. “It helped get us on the map and, quite frankly, a lot of cities and towns looked to our model.”

“Although I don’t have any proof or information that there is any wrongdoing in Baton Rouge, what we’re seeing coming out of New Orleans will most definitely trickle to Baton Rouge at some point in time.”

He believes greed has already held back Baton Rouge and the state technologically.

“To get companies to come down here, we have to get this kind of crap out of here,” MacDonald says. “Large software and IT companies refuse to do business in Louisiana because of these shenanigans.”