Despite Glitches, Computer System Is Helping LAPD, Chief Says

Despite reports of serious glitches in a massive new computer system, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams said Wednesday that the system has improved officers’ efficiency.

In a letter to Mayor Richard Riordan, Williams acknowledged the system’s problems, but said: “They are common to all large technology implementations and have not diminished the value of this system to the department.”

The system, which will cost $16 million when it is fully installed, is being funded by the Mayor’s Alliance for a Safer Los Angeles, a group of private contributors brought together by Riordan to bring the Police Department into the Computer Age and reduce the time officers spend on paperwork.

So far, the system has been connected to 13 police divisions and 700 workstations. With completion scheduled for June, it is expected to be connected throughout the department to 1,250 workstations.

Word of the problems arose Monday when Cmdr. Bill Russell told the City Council’s Public Safety Committee about the many problems, saying that the system is prone to crashes and is operating at 40% of capacity.

It was tested at the west San Fernando Valley Division in Reseda but was expanded to 12 other police divisions “before the bugs were worked out,” he told the committee.

“We built it on the fly, and whether we should have done that is neither here nor there,” Russell said.

But criticism of the system is a sore subject for Riordan, who last year announced with much fanfare the formation of the alliance and the group’s ability to raise the $16 million in donations.

City Hall sources said the mayor is worried because some of the donations for the system have yet to be collected, and he fears that the contributors may balk because of the adverse publicity.

After reporting the computer problems to the council committee, Russell was instructed to report bimonthly to the alliance on the status of the system.

In his report to the council committee, Russell said the system has crashed each time it was connected to a new division and that it has had problems handling large amounts of data.

But a confidential report suggests that problems with the system are even worse than Russell indicated. The report by a top police official who asked to remain anonymous said one of the biggest problems has been that the department does not have enough technical expertise to run the system and solve problems that arise.

The report goes on to say that only half of the 3,000 employees who are supposed to use the computers have completed the necessary 16-hour training classes.

The system in the West Valley station has crashed 15 times in the last few months, losing all the work that was in progress, the report said.

Despite the glitches, the system has already provided police with the ability to write reports on computers and to file copies into a mainframe system, officials said. Police previously had written most reports on forms that were filed in folders.

The system also allows police to send electronic messages to one another and to access local, state and federal crime databases.

“Even at this early stage of implementation, the computer network is enabling officers to spend far less time in the stations doing manual administrative tasks,” Williams said in the letter.