However, in the last two years, with the backing and support of the city's businesses, the department has pulled itself out of the 1950s and run headlong into the computer age. The solution for LAPD involved the development of an entirely new computer infrastructure system, with client/server technology and thousands of desktop workstations.
"Most arrests generate at least 10 reports and are used by at least six or seven people before they even reach the court system, and here we were trying to keep officers on the streets while they had to spend most of their time handwriting reports. We were stuck decades behind the times," said Troy Hart, LAPD's network manager and the man who headed up the network project. "The problem was that, for quite a long time, 94 percent of our budget went to personnel and six percent to equipment upgrades.
"You don't put together a modern network for 11,000 people on the kind of money we had to spend," Hart continued. "What made the difference was that Mayor [Richard] Riordan realized we had a problem, knew that the city couldn't pay for what needed to be done and found another way to make things happen. Now we have a growing network that links up the entire department, is flexible, relatively easy to learn and lets users enter data once with instant dispersion to multiple reports. And we didn't spend a dime out of the city budget."
How is a miracle like this made to happen?
Mayor Riordan did what mayors everywhere do best; he formed a commission -- the Mayor's Alliance for a Safer L.A. (MASLA).
MASLA found the funds required to implement the LAPD's infrastructure upgrade program; but instead of looking within the city budget, the alliance went out to the business community and raised $13 million to get the program underway. The bulk of that money came from corporations and local business owners. The Hollywood district was funded by a movie producer. While in the Newton area, the upgrade was paid for by the owner of a locally-based trucking company. In one region after another, private enterprise stepped up and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for cabling, servers, workstations and whatever else was needed.
To date, $20 million -- with most of the money coming from private industry and the balance from federal grants -- has been spent on a Wide Area Network (WAN) and a Local Area Network (LAN) that bridges to an already established token ring environment, which accesses the rest of the city government's information system. Within the LAPD environment there are 27 LANs, a client/server system and 2,000 workstations, with plans for totals of 2,600 workstations by the end of 1997 and 3,500 by 1999. The operating system is Novell's NetWare 4.1, chosen specifically for its flexibility and easy to learn interface and report formats.
For the network manager, this means the system requires a minimal amount of training, can handle the department's constant changes in personnel and can support the development of software that helps officers do their job. To the cop or detective on the street, it means this and more.
"This isn't television; 90 percent of our job is collecting data and doing paperwork. To be able to catch criminals, and do your job, you need data; and the more data you have, the better your chances of nabbing the bad guy," said Sergeant Steve Natale. "Before this system came into play, information on handwritten reports was filed away in file drawers and boxes -- depending on its age -- and if you wanted to look at an old report about a suspect, you had to search by report number for the information. Sometimes the report was in the right place; sometimes it wasn't. Even if you found it, it was handwritten and might be relatively illegible. The system worked but not well."
"And that was if the information you needed was filed at your station house," added Hart. "Oftentimes the information was over at Pacific and you worked out of Valley, so you drove over there and dug through their file drawers with the same mixed results. Not only did it make gathering information hard, but sometimes it created ludicrous, but unavoidable, situations where a detective was still working a crime in the Harbor while the perp (perpetrator) had been in custody for a couple days on another charge in Hollywood."
Now everyone at the department is working on the same page, with full and instant access to information. When an officer enters the data on a suspect in the computer, it populates several forms at once. If an investigation report is done, some of that data automatically fills in on an arrest form and other documents. And when a West Hollywood detective keys in a suspect's name on the system, detailed information on that suspect comes up automatically, including whether they are already in custody or not. In the future, it seems things will only get better.
Over in traffic, Sergeant Natale's division is looking at using laptops in the field for completing traffic reports, possibly with the maps already developed by city engineers.
"Prior to this we could have a million good ideas, but there was no structure on which to deploy a network-wide application," stated Natale. "For example, at all major accidents, the officers have to draw a map of the intersection or street location where it occurs. Of course, some of our people are better drawers than others, and we get a wide variety of representations, but it turns out that the city's Department of Engineers has pre-drawn intersection maps. We are working on a system where the officer will pull up the map on a laptop, plug in the accident specifics and file the report without ever leaving the scene," said Natale. The department is planning to deploy laptops by Dec. 1st. The initial test deployment will include 30 computers in the West Los Angeles division and 30 in the Pacific.
Learn As You Go
Still, with all the positives, the department staff admits the massive changeover has not been easy.
"We could definitely use more formal training on the system. The department seems to be taking the "learn as you go" approach, and it isn't always working well," claimed Natale. "I do understand the problem though, everyone wants more officers on the streets -- officers we don't have the money for -- so it is hard to justify taking one off the beat for a week of word-processing training.
"Overall, though, implementing the system has been a huge success," Natale continued. "In the beginning there were a few people that screamed, 'I don't want it! Get that thing off my desk!' Now everyone wishes they had their own workstation. Our reports are more accurate, our investigations more efficient and we are able to spend more time on the streets. Our work effects people's lives in a real way, and anything that helps us do our job better is a major plus."
Ray Dussault is a Sacramento, Calif.-based freelance writer.
