Study Urges Funding for LAPD Technology

Investing in the Los Angeles Police Department’s threadbare technology could save the LAPD and city taxpayers more than half a billion dollars over the next 10 years, a long-awaited and highly technical consultant’s report due out this week concludes.

Those savings could be channeled back into the Police Department and pay for hundreds of more officers patrolling city streets, according to officials who have studied the document and believe it represents a major step in addressing the LAPD’s long-standing technology woes. Police commissioners expect to receive the report Tuesday and forward it to the City Council so that elected officials can review its findings.

Although implementation of the technology modernization plan would cost between $151 million and $267 million over the next 10 years, advocates said that investment would be repaid in more efficient and effective police services for a city badly in need of it.

“We can no longer afford not to do this,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who has long expressed concerns about the Police Department’s technological abilities and who helped initiate the newly completed study. “Technology is going to save us an enormous amount of money and is the most cost-effective way not only of getting more police officers on the street but also of letting them work smarter.”

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The report, titled “Reengineering the Los Angeles Police Department,” was prepared by Mitretek Systems, a nonprofit corporation formed from the Virginia-based Mitre Corp. It is the third consultant analysis in a trio of related studies probing LAPD’s facilities, systems and equipment.

In recent months, one consultant report documented disarray in the LAPD’s police stations and other facilities. It suggested a massive construction and facilities program. One striking recommendation was its proposal for how to handle dilapidated Parker Center, historic home of the LAPD: Tear it down.

Then another consultant looked at the Police Department’s support divisions and found problem after problem, from officers who couldn’t shoot straight to an under-equipped Police Department laboratory to duplications of effort that were wasting millions of dollars. That consultant produced dozens of recommendations for improvement.

The Mitre report is less pointed, but it too portrays an organization badly in need of improvements, this time in the area of technology and computers.

The LAPD’s multiple computer systems, according to the Mitre study, “(1) do not exchange information with other systems; (2) do not provide information access across the LAPD to all who need access; (3) require duplicating information that gets used by multiple systems; (4) often require paper to be the means of exchanging information in lieu of integrated computer databases.”

The department’s technological shortcomings have shown up recently in varied ways, from officers who complain of radio batteries that run down before a shift ends to police commissioners, politicians and others who voice increasingly grave concerns about the reliability of LAPD data.

In addition, the Mitre report cites a number of other technological problems. It describes communications systems, for instance, as “woefully inadequate.” One example: Dispatchers for the police and fire departments cannot communicate with each other, delaying response times.

Mayor Richard Riordan has spearheaded a private fund-raising group that is outfitting many LAPD stations with computers. Because of that group, many stations are for the first time beginning to make use of computers in detective divisions and other areas. Nevertheless, the Mitre report represents the first attempt to comprehensively document the department’s technology needs and to create a single plan for modernization.

Under the blueprint it creates, LAPD officers of the future will be able to electronically analyze crime trends in their areas, division commanders will be able to hold teleconferences, and fingerprints, mug shots and composite drawings of suspects will be available to officers in their cars.

All of that is a far cry from today’s Police Department, where officers line up to check out the most basic gear, where police reports often are written by hand and where the mobile terminals in police cars are rudimentary devices.

Among other things, the improvements proposed by the Mitre report would involve phasing out those mobile terminals, which, when purchased decades ago, were hailed as a sign of the LAPD’s commitment to technologically cutting-edge law enforcement. Tight city funding has prevented the department from updating that system, and it now has been supplanted by far more advanced computer notions.

The current mobile system, for instance, is essentially limited to notifying officers about calls for help and to alerting them to basic information about the locations they are being dispatched to. The terminals are clunky, and the commands complex.

The Mitre study recommends replacing that system with a network of portable computers, each of which could access crime trend information and other data from the police car.

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Likewise, the Mitre report found that detectives and other department employees could increase their effectiveness if they had better technology at their fingertips.

The savings it envisions mostly would come from saving time that now is wasted on cumbersome paperwork. Though the report notes that “caution is needed when interpreting this data,” it says patrol officers estimate that they spend an average of 40% of their time doing paperwork. Detectives said they can spend between 60% and 90% of their time at such tasks.

The report estimates that officers could save 2 1/2 hours a week through automating the writing, copying and delivery of reports. And overall, the department could save between $58 million and $136 million each year in officer time, it says.

Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher, who has cited the need to improve LAPD technology as a central goal of his one-year term at the helm of the Police Department’s civilian oversight panel, said he expects the commission to receive the report Tuesday but not to act on it. Councilwoman Chick said she intended to address the commission Tuesday as well, and she pledged to pursue the issue with LAPD officials and City Hall leaders.

“This really gives us a game plan, a blueprint,” she said. “We must find a way to do this. It can’t be a question of if, but of when and how.”