Glitches Plague $16-Million LAPD Computer System

A $16-million police computer system that was funded through a highly touted venture between city officials and private contributors has been plagued by glitches, is prone to crashing and is operating at 40% of its capacity, city officials said Monday.

The system for the Los Angeles Police Department was funded by “The Mayor’s Alliance,” a group of private contributors brought together by Mayor Richard Riordan to bring the entire department into the computer age.

So far, the system has been connected to 13 police divisions, providing 700 workstations. With completion scheduled for June, it is expected to be connected throughout the department with 1,250 workstations.

But police officials acknowledged that the job of designing and installing the system was beyond the expertise of the police staff and city computer experts. They also said they underestimated the cost of the system.

“We honestly miscalculated the scope” of the work, Police Cmdr. Bill Russell told the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.

Although the system was initially tested at the West Valley Division in Reseda, it was expanded to 12 other police divisions before the “bugs were worked out,” he said. “We built it on the fly and whether we should have done that is neither here nor there,” Russell said.