NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly was grilled yesterday over the delay in installing $300,000 worth of security cameras in the Rockaways — and e-mails obtained by The Post show that the paperwork is on his desk.
Correspondence between the NYPD’s grant department and a Queens assemblyman indicate the ball is in Kelly’s court.
A source said the only thing holding back the cameras is “his John Hancock.”
“The grant remains up in the police commissioner’s office. They are aware of the urgency surrounding it and have made inquiries about it. I expect it back shortly,” John Underwood, who works in the NYPD’s grant unit, wrote Wednesday to Assemblyman Joseph Goldfeder (D-Ozone Park).
The state approved the grant in October 2010, but the cameras never arrived.
At a City Council hearing yesterday, Kelly said City Comptroller John Liu needs to sign off on the paperwork before the cameras can be put in — and even then it could take awhile before they’re installed.
“We’re waiting for the contracts to be registered with the comptroller,” Kelly told the council’s Public Safety Committee.
Queens Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. said, “Frankly, if the NYPD is stymied by the city’s bureaucracy, then I don’t know what chance the average citizen has.”