LOS ANGELES : LAPD Gets Grant to Link With Sheriff’s Gang Files

Steering the fight against gangs onto the information superhighway, the Los Angeles City Council has accepted a grant to allow city police to merge their files on suspected gang members with the sheriff’s electronic database, creating a countywide tracking system with more than 150,000 names.

Although praised by law enforcement officials, the merger has worried civil libertarians, who fear that the data could be used to infringe upon the rights of people who have never been convicted of a crime.

The $100,000 award from the state will pay for computers and software needed for the Los Angeles Police Department to hook up its files with the Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking (GREAT) database run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Combined, the two agencies’ programs will contain thousands of names, nicknames, addresses and photographs of alleged gang members, all of which will be immediately accessible via a computer and modem.

Currently, police and sheriff’s deputies must share the information by telephone and on paper, a laborious process that would be virtually eliminated by the new system.