Amid Pressure, LAPD to Use Computer System

After paying $250,000 last fall to settle a lawsuit and purchase a computer system written by a Los Angeles police sergeant, the LAPD has yet to put the system to use, and the department’s conduct prompted a city councilwoman to intervene Monday.

Councilwoman Laura Chick emerged from a flurry of meetings with a promise that the system, designed by Sgt. Craig Crosby, may at last be used by the Los Angeles Police Department.

“It’s absolutely criminal to ignore good ideas,” said Chick, who spoke to Police Chief Willie L. Williams about Crosby’s work Monday. “We already own it.”

Chick had prepared a City Council motion directing the department to make use of Crosby’s system, and she had intended to introduce that motion today. But LAPD officials urged her not to go ahead with those plans and instead promised her that they would move forward with the system.

“It’s not being ignored,” said Deputy Chief Ron Banks. “It’s going to be plugged in as we go.”

Last fall, the city settled a lawsuit brought by Crosby, and in the process won the rights to use his computer program--a system that so simplifies record-keeping and planning that analysts have said it could save the department millions of dollars a year. Crosby had sued the city because the LAPD, he said, reneged on a contract and transferred him as punishment for challenging the department brass.

As that case was about to go to trial, lawyers for the city offered Crosby $250,000 to settle the case and acquire the computer system.

“They have full access,” Crosby said last week. “But they have chosen not to use it.”

Chick, Crosby’s attorney, Martin S. Bakst, and others blamed the LAPD’s intransigence on its unwillingness to acknowledge that the sergeant produced such a valuable tool on his own time. After making little headway, Chick began drafting a motion last week to urge the department to move forward.

“My sense is that wounded egos are getting in the way,” she said. “If the only thing stopping them is bruised egos, I don’t want to hear about it.”

But after Chick informed Williams of her plans for the motion, department leaders scrambled to prove that they were not stalling.

“We are not in a position of putting that on a shelf and saying: ‘We’re going to pout and not use it,’ ” Banks said Monday.

He added that it may take some time to evaluate the possible applications of Crosby’s work but that the department is committed to making use of it.

If so, that might finally mark the end to an unusual dispute that has taken years to resolve. Crosby developed the system in the late 1980s, and it debuted to a warm reception within the LAPD.

“For the first time, reports on productivity trends and goal attainment can be evaluated by management in time,” Capt. John Wilbanks wrote after a 90-day test run of Crosby’s system. “This puts Pacific Division in a position to be proactive, rather than reactive, to its goals.”

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But at the end of the LAPD’s test run, Crosby said the department continued using the system without permission, violating its agreement with him. That is when Crosby elected to let the system go blank, in essence pulling the plug on the project.

That move infuriated department commanders and set the stage for the dispute. One commander, Jimmy Jones, praised Crosby’s work as “superior” and said it “would save untold additional officer hours.” But he urged the department to reject Crosby’s system based on “the past practices and the poor reputation” that Crosby displayed when he let the system lapse.

When the department followed that advice, Crosby filed a lawsuit.

Crosby’s defenders have argued that the department was punishing him for standing up for his rights. Chick said she was distressed to learn recently that the city’s expenditure to settle the lawsuit still had not prompted officials to use the system.

In addition, Chick has solicited suggestions in yet another project: upgrading the LAPD’s increasingly obsolete technology. One suggestion she received comes from Crosby, who has prepared a detailed proposal for propelling the LAPD’s computer capacity into the future--a blueprint that he says could be implemented at one police station for about $750,000.

Chick said the flurry of activity Monday encouraged her to believe that perhaps the LAPD will embrace Crosby’s contribution. “We need to move ahead,” she said.