Corporate Donors Put LAPD On-Line : Police: Group contributes $15.7 million in equipment and software. It is the equivalent of putting more than 360 officers on the streets, officials say.

Inheriting a Police Department with a woefully antiquated record-keeping system that wastes thousands of patrol hours each week and shrinking city coffers that make solutions difficult to afford, Mayor Richard Riordan faced a quandary: how to keep his campaign promise to modernize the Los Angeles Police Department and get more officers on the street?

Riordan, the millionaire businessman, turned to his well-connected friends in the corporate world. And 15 months later, they have raised enough to install a state-of-the-art computer system and buy custom-designed software that brings time--and money-saving technology--to a system that smacks of the 1950s.

This morning, heralding what is believed to be the biggest private gift to a law enforcement agency in the United States, the Mayor’s Alliance for a Safer L.A. is scheduled to announce that it has reached its goal of $15 million--and then some. During a news conference at the 77th Street Area’s temporary headquarters in south Los Angeles, officials will demonstrate a little of what that money is buying.

For the first time in the LAPD’s history, its 18 stations, four traffic divisions, Parker Center headquarters and a training academy in Westchester will be linked electronically. By using computers and specially designed software to fill out arrest reports and other labor-intensive paperwork that up to now has been done mostly by hand, the department expects to gain at least 640,000 hours a year in policing time--the equivalent of 368 more officers on the streets. Police Department officials estimate the new technology will save almost $134 million in improved efficiency.

“We wanted to do something that could really make a difference,” said Bruce Karatz, a Kaufman and Broad Home Corp. executive who spearheaded the drive. A Riordan supporter in the 1993 mayor’s race, Karatz said he shared Riordan’s concern for public safety and his view that a good technological system could greatly help the LAPD do its job.

The alliance was launched over breakfast with Riordan and Police Chief Willie L. Williams at Karatz’s home in Santa Monica, with the two city officials agreeing to join Karatz as co-chairmen, and the building industry executive shouldering the task of raising the money.

The 22-member executive committee, most of whom have made substantial contributions, reads like a list of who’s who among major corporations and charitable foundations. And the donors who contributed some of the $15,777,292 raised by the campaign included many from neighboring cities and even some from Orange County.

Among the biggest contributions were the Ahmanson Foundation’s $3 million, the $1.5 million from Blue Cross of California, and the almost $1.2 million in computers and other equipment from Compaq Computer Corp. Orange County-based Fluor Corp. gave an undisclosed amount, while Coca-Cola ran an in-store promotion donating a percentage of each purchase. The Ralph’s/Food 4 Less Foundation gave nearly $700,000, while the wealthy mayor’s own Riordan Foundation put up $300,000. Almost $2 million of the total came from small or “confidential” contributions. “What happens in Los Angeles is an issue for all of Southern California--that was the argument I made, and everybody understood it,” Karatz said.

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Yet the alliance’s well-publicized formation was not without critics. Some expressed concern about whether the department would be perceived as beholden to big donors and whether the alliance might represent a return to the days when a small group of powerful Downtown interests ran the city.

Still others disputed the notion of private interests paying for a public responsibility they believed belonged with the city and its taxpayers--an argument Karatz said he sometimes encountered in talking with prospective donors.

“Some do believe this should be handled by the city, but they realize that public safety is very important, that the city can’t do it all. For such an important issue as fighting crime, people were willing to join in and help,” he said.

Karatz dismissed the notion that donors might try to turn their donations to their personal advantage: “This department is a big, independent part of city government” that is several layers removed from contributors, few of whom have the time or inclination to be courting favors with the department.

Ethical concerns seemed far from the minds of donors, if samplings of letters received with some of the contributions are any indication.

“I’m a 75-year-old widow, and I’ve not much money,” said one handwritten note accompanying a $50 check. “However, I have a great deal of respect for police . . . [so] I’m happy to send it.”

At 77th Street and the West Valley stations, the new system is up and running, and installation at all stations is scheduled for completion by summer. Training is under way.

For Jeff Hulet, the LAPD’s project manager who oversaw system design and procurement with the alliance’s Kimberly King, the new network is a dream he had long thought beyond the department’s grasp.

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To help with the “four- to five-hour ordeal” of writing a complex crime report by hand, many officers had been buying their own desktop computers and bringing in secondhand printers, Hulet said.

He told how some especially technology-hungry and enterprising officers at West Valley dug through the trash bins at Lockheed Corp. a couple of years ago and came up with seven discarded personal computers. They got six working and managed to improve the station’s “filing rate” by 17%.

Today, they have Compaq Deskpro XLs and software that cuts the paperwork time by almost 40%, and provides instant access to the California Penal Code, operations manuals, vehicle identification information, fingerprint information from other stations, and access to outside agency’s crime databanks.

They have “file servers” to store large amounts of data and to allow them to communicate with other stations and laser printers.

It’s all about as far away as you can get from rummaging in a trash bin.