When Speed Is of the Essence : Councilwoman Chick calls for overhauling LAPD’s outdated communications technology

Advanced electronic technology--ranging from integrated computer networks to satellite and fiber-optic communications--has raised workplace productivity and efficiency by dramatically reducing the time required for many tasks. Indeed, the products of modern science are now so common, and are relied on so heavily, that it’s hard to imagine how offices of business and government ever got along without them.

However, many employees of the Los Angeles Police Department have yet to directly experience the benefits of the megabyte. That’s because the LAPD, the second-busiest police department in the nation, is technologically deprived.

According to City Council member Laura Chick, substandard and outdated technology may be keeping 30% to 40% of available officers from the field every day. In fact, the department still lacks a computer network linking its 18 geographic divisions. That’s an absurdity in a city that is among the most underpoliced in the country.

Chick has introduced a motion to convene experts from within and outside the LAPD to draft a modernization plan for communications. The aim is to enhance public safety by improving efficiency and helping to implement so-called community policing. The San Fernando Valley councilwoman hopes to present the proposal to the City Council’s public safety committee within nine months so it can be included in the 1995-96 budget.

The new emphasis on upgrading technology in the Police Department is long overdue. Of course, the required equipment will not come cheap. And before any public monies are set aside for this improvement, the council should explain why the city has been so slow to upgrade its 911 emergency telephone system.

Two years ago, 77% of L.A. voters supported Proposition M, a $235-million bond measure to enhance and expand the city’s overloaded and often unreliable emergency communications system. Now, despite several near-failures of the existing system, some officials maintain it could take seven more years to get the new emergency network up and running. We agree with city Controller Rick Tuttle’s description of the process as “unacceptably long to the voters.”

Bureaucratic torpor and inefficiency increasingly are testing the credibility of government in a complex society that demands quick responses. Public safety, more than any other responsibility of government, demands speed. A minute can be long, very long, when a life is in peril.