WEST VALLEY : Council OKs Study of LAPD Computers

If a wide and coveted strip of the information superhighway runs through Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department is chugging down that road in a technological Edsel, some police and city officials say.

So the City Council passed a plan Tuesday with the hope of studying and eventually supercharging the department’s archaic (and in some cases nonexistent) computer and communications systems.

“Yes, we need more officers on the street,” said City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who introduced the plan. “But we also need to give them the tools to fight crime.”

The plan calls for the city to retain a consultant and develop a detailed schedule for implementing such modern communications services as an on-line information link and a departmentwide computer system.

Just having a personal computer “helps put the bad guys away, so can you imagine what a whole computer system could do?” said Chick, the West Valley representative on the council.

The proposal is getting high-level support, according to Bill Russell, commander of the LAPD Support Services Bureau. In a recent planning meeting, improving technology ranked third as a department priority, after eliminating bias within the department and increasing staff and patrol personnel, he said.

“We spend a lot of time doing paperwork, and to the extent we can reduce that time, it’s like hiring extra officers,” Russell said.

Although the LAPD is one of the largest and most advanced police departments in the world, many small-town forces employ more advanced technology, with officers writing reports on portable computers, communicating with other stations via electronic mail, and doing in-depth research from their desks.

The Devonshire and West Valley divisions are considered among the most technologically complex of the department’s 18 divisions because they have personal computers. Many of those machines are years out of date, however, and virtually all were donated.

What’s more, they are not linked through a common system, Chick said, and so act as little more than word processors.

Department officials say the study--which is due to be completed by spring--should complement the efforts of the Mayor’s Alliance for Public Safety, a group of business executives already working to raise funds for updating crime-fighting technology in the LAPD.

“It’s sort of like the Mayor’s Alliance is building a highway, and this study will help create the vehicles to travel on that highway,” Russell said.