The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s 38-year-old computer-aided dispatch system crashed on New Year’s Eve, leaving deputies to handle calls by radio for three days. The system failure began around 8 p.m. on Dec. 31, when several patrol stations reported that the dispatch program in their vehicles had become inoperable when personnel tried to log in with the new year.
Without the computer system, deputies relied on radio or cellphones to receive dispatch information and documented details manually. This significantly slowed the department down and monopolized critical radio airtime. Deputies were also unable to perform simple tasks in the field, such as checking a driver’s license or determining if someone was wanted on a warrant, without calling into one of the 23 patrol stations that remained operational.
Despite these challenges, the department managed to continue responding to calls for service, which were manually tracked at each station. Radio communications and 911 lines remained fully operational. One deputy likened the situation to “our own little Y2K,” the term used to describe the anticipated meltdown of computer systems when faced with the transition from 1999 to 2000.
Sheriff’s dispatch system outage issues
Sheriff Robert G. Luna noted that the system failure “was not a complete surprise” due to the department’s history of previous outages, albeit none as severe as this one.
He acknowledged that the antiquated system had prepared deputy sheriffs for such manual operations in urgent scenarios. The department announced on Friday that it had temporarily resolved the systemwide outage, allowing deputies to once again receive relevant call information through their patrol car computers. However, they also emphasized that the three-day outage served as “a harsh and dramatic warning” regarding their “archaic system.”
Sheriff Luna has been working to upgrade the technology since he came into office two years ago.
In mid-2023, the department issued a formal request to acquire a new modernized, centralized CAD system that will greatly enhance their capabilities. The union representing rank-and-file deputies, the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, pointed to the crash 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, said. For now, the department is working to resolve the issue while continuing to respond to calls for service in a more traditional manner.
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