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Southern
California Police Forces Linking Up With Feds, Each Other
By Daniel Fowler
CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - INTELLIGENCE
12/19/07
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Information-sharing software called COPLINK
will soon enable Los Angeles area law enforcement agencies to more
effectively exchange information with each other and federal partners.
The Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department and police departments in other cities in the county are
collaborating on the initiative, and the technology will be incorporated
into the Los Angeles fusion center, according to LAPD officials.
"It's important because crime doesn't exist within certain boundaries of
cities," Michael P. Downing, deputy chief commanding officer of the
LAPD's Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau. "It's
transient. It moves. It's fluid."
Tim Riley, the LAPD's chief information officer, said the Los Angeles
system will feature three nodes: One for LAPD, one for the sheriff's
department, which provides police services to more than 40 cities, and
one for the independent police departments in the more than 40 other
cities in the county.
In the first quarter of 2008, Riley said he expects to have all three
nodes tied together and linked with nodes in Orange and San Diego
counties. He said some of the nodes would be connected earlier and not
all communities will be online in first quarter 2008. "We are
establishing the whole infrastructure," he said. "The final piece is to
then tie them together."
COPLINK is a Tucson, Ariz.-based Knowledge Computing Corp. software
suite that is now used in 600 jurisdictions around the country,
according to the company's president and chief executive officer, Robert
Griffin. He said the various jurisdictions have the ability to negotiate
memorandums of understanding to share their information with each other.
Without COPLINK, information sharing in Los Angeles is "basically based
on relationships and phone calls and independent inquiries," Downing
said. "This will make it more seamless." Downing said various agencies
currently have their own databases, but they "don't talk to each other."
In connection with the Los Angeles program, the Department of Homeland
Security is developing a regional information sharing capability that
will enable it to transmit information to the Department of Justice and
to COPLINK and receive information from them using the DOJ's
communication protocol standard, according to a DHS spokesman.
"What the technology solution will allow is greater efficiency in how we
share the information that we are sharing already," the DHS spokesman
said.
"We can't operate in silos," Downing said. ". . . The only way we can
get better and get in the area of prediction and look at crimes that may
be fueling bigger, more violent, more horrendous crimes such as
terrorism is to share information with one another so we can connect the
dots and see things that might not be apparent with one data set."
Riley said LAPD is encouraging other neighboring communities to get
information sharing systems as well.
Source: CQ Homeland Security
Copyright 2007 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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