Police Turn a Profit With Computers

The joke among some in law enforcement is that the West Covina Police Department is just a front for a $1-million-a-year computer business.

In a novel enterprise, the department sells law enforcement-related software and data management services to three dozen agencies in the West.

The department--the only known law enforcement agency to hawk computer services--saves City Hall a half-million dollars a year.

“We built a better mousetrap, and everyone who sees it wants it,” said Cmdr. Jim Dillon, head of the department’s 4-year-old computer enterprise and the acting chief.

But the department’s foray into the business world raises some red flags about the dangers of mingling public agencies with commerce.

Dillon is acting chief because the City Council earlier this month put Chief John T. Distelrath on leave amid allegations of conflict of interest.

At issue was yet another of the department’s entrepreneurial ventures: its driving and shooting training center that features computer simulation. The city attorney is probing, among other things, the chief’s allegedly improper hiring of a consultant to market the center to other police departments.

City officials, however, say they still support their department’s moneymaking spirit.

“Frankly, I think in a day and age of less government, we have to be as cost-effective as we can be,” said West Covina Mayor Ben Wong. “I respect [that questions have been raised], but I don’t see that there is any connection between the current incident and the issue of whether business ventures by the city is a good thing. . . . The problem has not stemmed from our efforts to market goods and services.”

*

In an era when voters are reluctant to approve tax increases, government agencies have looked for ways to expand or share services to cut costs. Pasadena offers health services to residents of surrounding towns. Azusa’s public works department until recently swept the streets of Sierra Madre. And Covina buys police helicopter services from Baldwin Park.

But few governments can claim the success of the West Covina Police Department’s Service Group, which grosses $1 million a year from selling smaller law enforcement agencies software that improves communication and crime data access.

Most of the revenue is reinvested or goes to pay for expenses, such as the salary of the service group’s six employees: three software engineers and three officers who run the enterprise on a part-time basis.

The venture makes a small profit, but more significant is the money it saves the city--because the service group pays for its own rent and electricity and provides free computer services to the rest of City Hall. Officials estimate savings to the city at $550,000 a year.

West Covina’s enterprise began in the late 1980s. Thanks to federal asset seizure laws that allowed law enforcement agencies to keep part of the money confiscated from criminals, the city invested about $1 million of its $20-million haul into a new police computer division, the brainchild of then-Chief Craig Miacham.

The department joined with a private company to create software to manage its records and a computer-aided dispatching system in which patrol officers can receive computerized information before arriving at a scene.

Eventually, the department decided to run its own show, and began attracting other departments that liked what they saw. One selling point: the ability of agencies to share a mainframe computer and look up each other’s records, aiding in crime investigations.

Police departments have access to state and federal databases such as motor vehicle registrations and criminal records, but what they lack is communication among individual police departments, according to experts and police officers.

Incident reports from one department, for example, are not readily accessible to outside agencies. Officers investigating crimes within their cities’ boundaries have to follow hunches and call other departments one by one to request information.

However, departments sharing a single mainframe computer to store their records can search each other’s databases.

*

The 11 agencies in California currently sharing West Covina’s mainframe routinely check each other’s data.

“It is a really interesting approach,” said Tom Reinhardt, senior vice president of PRC Inc. in McLean, Va., which sells computer services to large U.S. and Canadian cities.

Reinhardt said the service group may have found a niche among smaller agencies by offering cross-communication and by tapping into West Covina’s firsthand knowledge about the needs of law enforcement.

Lt. Ed Ethell of the La Palma Police Department in Orange County, which pays West Covina $98,000 a year for its service, said the ability to network with other local police agencies through the West Covina mainframe computer “was a big factor” in signing up.

In an effort to replicate the service group’s success, West Covina in September unveiled its state-of-art, $300,000 driving and shooting simulator, which it hopes to tout to police departments and other agencies.

The training facility, one of the few centers in the state certified under the Peace Officers Standards of Training, opened to much hoopla and fanfare.

But the party atmosphere quickly unraveled when anonymous faxes buzzed around City Hall last month, alleging that Chief Distelrath had improperly hired Sonnie Faires, a consultant and president of the West Covina Chamber of Commerce, to manage and market the training center.

The faxes alleged that the chief and Faires were involved in a seminar services business on the side, which Distelrath did not report officially.

Faires earned more than $50,000 over two years while working for the department. Any contract over $10,000 a year must go through a formal bidding process, said City Atty. Elizabeth Martyn.

Distelrath, who became chief in 1993, denies any impropriety. “I respect the [City] Council’s right to raise questions, but not to micro-manage,” he said.

*

Stephen Chand of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a Falls Church, Va., advocacy organization, sees problems with the chief’s involvement in business enterprises.

“From my point of view, a police chief who is active and providing services to other departments certainly opens himself up to charges of unfair conduct,” he said.

Chand and other experts say public officials have to answer to a much stricter standard of conduct than those in the private sector.

Chand also raised the issue of liability. “If there is a problem or failure of service, who is going to get sued?” he asked. “The taxpayers may ultimately be the ones who become liable.”

Alan Heslop, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said cities that want to spin off businesses “have to be a lot ttmore responsible and more alert to real or perceived conflict-of-interest problems.

In the case of a police department, in particular, the public confidence [issue] is especially great.”

Still, Heslop said West Covina deserves credit.

“You have to hand it to them that they made it so successful,” he said.