The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s patrol dispatch system has been down for more than two days after an outage on New Year’s Eve. As a result, the department returned to using paper records and radio communication to coordinate actions.
A large portion of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) computer system went down at 8:00 PM on New Year’s Eve. The malfunction caused the system to “think” it was 2003 in the yard and interfered with communication with other department systems. That forced the department back to manually tracking calls at each station, with patrol cars receiving instructions over the radio. Despite the power outage, the department ensured prompt processing of all calls and their manual registration. “We are always prepared for the unexpected, even if it means going back to pen and paper,” the department said in a Facebook post. The situation is complicated by the fact that only two people knew about the programming of the system, one of whom died and the other did not answer the call. The incident underscores the problem of outdated technology in the Los Angeles Police Department: In 2023, Sheriff Robert Luna proposed to modernize the system, but so far it has not succeeded.
The issue of technical support for the Los Angeles Police Department has been debated for some time. Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva has repeatedly warned that the department’s systems run on equipment that is no longer supported by the manufacturer. The outage comes amid increased attention on law enforcement in the US following the terrorist attack in New Orleans and the explosion of a Tesla cyber truck outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump.
The failure of the LASD system underscores the need to modernize the law enforcement infrastructure. The use of outdated technology in critical services poses a serious risk to public safety.
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