City Hall bureaucracy has stymied the Los Angeles Police Department's
efforts to buy a $2 million crime-fighting computer system that would
help in the arrests of thousands of gang members a year and free up
dozens of officers for other duties, the Daily News has learned.
LAPD officials hope to
revive the year-old efforts to buy a widely used computer program called
COPLINK at a meeting today. COPLINK allows police to target violent
criminals by linking various databases -- including sex-offender
registries, gang databases and inmate records -- providing ready access
to information that otherwise requires a time-consuming search through
each system.
"I wish that this would be moving a lot faster," said LAPD Assistant
Chief George Gascon, who is championing the COPLINK program.
"For me, it's frustrating. Without endorsing the particular software
company, these capabilities are very critical to our crime-fighting
ability. We have to be smarter than other agencies because we don't have
the people to throw at the problem."
The COPLINK proposal isn't dead, but is being considered as part of the
LAPD's overall technology package, said Ron Wilkerson, who was hired in
June as the department's chief information officer.
The LAPD has fewer than 9,200 officers -- down by more than 100 from
last year's level. Although most categories of crime are declining, the
homicide rate as of July 31 was up 3.3 percent over the comparable
period last year, according to the latest LAPD data available.
According to a report prepared by a consultant for Chief Legislative
Analyst Ron Deaton, COPLINK technology would allow LAPD officers to
increase arrests of gang members by 83 a week above the current average
of 128.
In addition, the time saved by using COPLINK would free up 128 officers
for other duties, according to the report by consultant Mike Mount. His
conclusions were based largely on the experience of the police
department in Tucson, Ariz., which has used COPLINK since the mid-1990s.
COPLINK would cost the LAPD $1.6 million to $2.2 million to start,
possibly defrayed by grants, and about $250,000 to $350,000 a year to
operate, officials said.
Tucson Police Department Detective Tim Petersen said COPLINK has made a
big difference in that 500,000-population city, which has struggled with
gang violence. He said the program is easy to use and particularly
efficient in spotting gang members who assume multiple identities.
"We definitely have used it to solve or assist in dozens of cases where
we (otherwise) may not have been able to solve it or would have taken a
lot longer to do it," Petersen said.
COPLINK digs through crime records to find connections of people, places
and things, and it gives officers ready access to a catalog of
information about suspects and crime locations, he said.
More than 100 U.S. cities use COPLINK, said Robert Griffin, president of
Knowledge Computing Corp., a Tucson company that licenses the program.
Although LAPD leaders were enthusiastic about COPLINK, officials at City
Hall put the brakes on the purchase by insisting that police take more
time to evaluate how the program would work in Los Angeles and to
consider competing programs, Griffin said.
"The police were extremely unhappy about the opinion that they needed to
go with (a request for competing proposals)," Griffin said. "The faster
we get things in, the more lives we're going to save. I don't know about
the politics of (the delay), but it wasn't the LAPD."
Deaton said he wants to make sure the LAPD isn't spending money on
technology that might be incompatible with databases already in use, as
well as ones in development on complaints against officers, incidents
involving use of force by officers and trends involving officer
behavior.
"The concept of having crime data and allocating people accordingly is
something I fully support. ... Getting accurate data and processing it
so it can be used in that area is the difficult task," Deaton said.
He declined to comment further on the reasons for the delay.
The LAPD has long suffered from backward and incompatible technology.
The monitor overseeing the LAPD's compliance with a federal consent
decree mandating reforms has repeatedly faulted the department for its
slowness in developing a program to track officer behavior.
The LAPD's new chief technology officer, Ron Wilkerson, conceded that
the LAPD is saddled with "somewhat disjointed" technology.
Wilkerson, who was hired in June, is exploring whether COPLINK can be
integrated into the LAPD, Chief William Bratton said.
City Councilman Jack Weiss, who serves on council committees dealing
with the LAPD and with technology, said he's frustrated at the slow
progress of LAPD technology.
"I think that the LAPD is rather technology-light," Weiss said. "These
sorts of programs, when you get an innovative leader like George Gascon
behind them, really should be put into place.
"I've seen the wheels turn mighty slowly around here," Weiss said.
"Sometimes that's the nature of how we do things."
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