By Keri Blakinger
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — A few hours before the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, the computer dispatch system for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department crashed, rendering all patrol car computers nearly useless and forcing deputies to handle all calls by radio, according to officials and sources in the department.
Department leaders first learned of the problem around 8 p.m., when deputies at several sheriff’s stations began having trouble logging onto their patrol car computers, officials told The Times in a statement.
The department said it eventually determined its computer-aided dispatch program — known as CAD — was “not allowing personnel to log on with the new year, making the CAD inoperable.”
It’s not clear how long it will take to fix the problem, but in the meantime deputies and dispatchers are handling everything old-school — using their radios instead of patrol car computers.
“It’s our own little Y2K,” a deputy who was working Wednesday morning told The Times. The deputy, along with three other department sources who spoke to The Times about the problem, asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the record and feared retaliation.
“Now, the call takers have to write down all the information for each call and then the dispatch has to voice all the details and the patrol unit has to write it all down,” the deputy said. “They don’t have the ability to run people or plates. They can’t pull report numbers to give to people, so they have to call dispatch.”
None of that affects whether deputies are able to do their jobs, the deputy said, but “it’s just making everyone’s job more difficult.”
Officials said that deputies’ body-worn cameras can still record, and department emails are still working normally.
“We are still responding to calls for service and they are being tracked manually at the station level,” the department said. “Additionally, our radio communications and our 911 lines are fully functional.”
This isn’t the first time in recent years the department has been forced to handle calls in an old-fashioned way. Some deputies said they were used to going back to “self-dispatch” and handling calls by radio when the system goes down for maintenance — but that those outages are typically planned and short.
“Not like this,” said the deputy working Wednesday morning.
The timing of the malfunction has sparked a degree of concern among deputies. One told The Times it was a “scary” problem to grapple with on the day of the Rose Bowl football game and Rose Parade. Others said that given the age of the system, the outage wasn’t entirely surprising.
“We’re definitely behind on some technology,” one official said. “It is an antiquated system and we have recognized that for some time.”
Ex-Sheriff Alex Villanueva also weighed in on the matter Wednesday by posting a 2022 letter to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors on X. In the letter, department leaders requested funding for a new computer-aided dispatch system, saying the existing system was so old it couldn’t comply with data collection requirements.
For its part, the department said it was in the process of trying to upgrade the dispatch system.
“The Department has long faced significant challenges with outdated technology, and since taking office, the Sheriff has emphasized the urgent need to improve and upgrade our internal systems,” read a department statement. “In mid-2023, the Department issued a formal request for proposals to acquire a new modernized, centralized CAD system that will greatly enhance our capabilities.”
The Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union representing rank-and-file deputies, framed the New Year’s Eve system crash in dire terms, pointing to it as evidence of a need for more funding.
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is under-resourced in critical areas of staffing, training, equipment, facilities and obviously technology,” Richard Pippin, ALADS president, told The Times. “Will the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors take notice in light of their own public demands for organizational improvements in advance of the upcoming Olympics and other major events? Violent street takeovers and sprawling homeless encampments might only be the start of our problems.”
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