Hours before the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s computer dispatch system crashed, rendering computers in all patrol cars nearly useless and forcing deputies to send all calls over the air, department officials and officials say. He said he was forced to deal with it. .
Officials told the Times in a statement that they first learned of the problem around 8 p.m., when deputies from multiple sheriff’s departments began having problems logging onto their patrol cars’ computers. .
The department said it ultimately determined that the computer-aided dispatch program, known as CAD, “has been unable to log on in the new year, rendering CAD inoperable.”
It’s unclear how long it will take to resolve the issue, but in the meantime, deputies and dispatchers are responding the old-fashioned way, using radios instead of computers in patrol cars.
“This is our own little Y2K,” a deputy on duty Wednesday morning told the Times. The aide, along with three other department officials who spoke to the Times about the matter, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record and feared retaliation.
“Currently, the call taker has to write down all the information on each call, then the dispatcher has to voice all the details and the patrol unit has to write it all down,” the lieutenant said. “They don’t have the ability to manage people or plates. They can’t get a report number and tell people, so they have to call dispatch.”
None of that affects whether deputies can do their jobs, but “it just makes everyone’s job harder,” the deputy said.
Officials said cameras worn by the deputies are still able to record and department email is functioning normally.
“We are still responding to calls for service and manually tracking them at the station level,” the department said. “Additionally, radio communications and 911 lines are fully operational.”
This isn’t the first time in recent years that the department has been forced to answer calls the old-fashioned way. Some lawmakers said they were used to reverting to “self-dialing” and answering calls over the air when the system goes down for maintenance, but such outages are usually planned and short-lived. said.
“This is different,” said the deputy on duty Wednesday morning.
The timing of the failure caused some concern among lawmakers. One person told the Times it was a “terrible” problem to tackle on the day of the Rose Bowl football game and Rose Parade. Some say the outage was not entirely surprising given the age of the system.
“We’re clearly behind in some technologies,” one official said. “This is an outdated system and we’ve known that for a long time.”
In addition to efforts to resolve current issues, the ministry said it is in the process of attempting to upgrade its existing dispatch system.
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies Assn., the union that represents rank-and-file deputies, described the New Year’s Eve system crash in dire terms and pointed to it as evidence that more funding is needed.
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is under-resourced in critical areas: staffing, training, equipment, equipment, and obviously technology,” ALADS Chairman Richard Pippin told the Times. “Will the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors consider the demands of its own citizens for better organization ahead of the upcoming Olympics and other major events? Violent street occupations and sprawling homeless encampments , it may just be the beginning of our problems.”
Source link
