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After three days of using only radio to communicate with deputies in the field, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said on Friday that it had temporarily fixed the systemwide outage of the computer dispatch system for its patrol vehicles.
In a statement released late Friday evening, the department said that its deputies could again receive relevant call information through their patrol car computers but stressed that the three-day outage — which affected a service area of about 3.5 million people — was “a harsh and dramatic warning” about their “archaic system.”
“In the broader scope of things, the reason this happened is because the system is over 38 years old,” Sheriff Robert G. Luna said in an interview before the outage was fixed, adding that he had been working to upgrade the technology since he came into office two years ago.
The nation’s largest sheriff’s department started off the new year by grappling with a systemwide outage that sent the deputies back in time to the days of pen and paper.
Around 8 p.m. on Dec. 31, several patrol stations reported that the computer-aided dispatch program in their patrol vehicles had been rendered inoperable when personnel tried to log in with the new year, the department said in a statement.
In speaking with The Los Angeles Times, one deputy with the department called it “our own little Y2K,” referring to the meltdown of computer systems that was expected when outdated computer systems had to make the switch from 1999 to the year 2000.
The department then had to return back to basics. Instead of relying on the computer system to receive dispatches on a range of issues, from minor requests to emergency calls, deputy sheriffs instead had to receive communication over the radio or on cellphones and write down the information in the field. This change slowed down the department and tied up critical radio airtime, Sheriff Luna said.
Deputies were also unable to perform simple tasks in the field, such as checking a driver’s license or seeing if someone was wanted on a warrant. Instead, they had to radio or call into one of the 23 patrol stations whose data systems remained up and running — as was done in the days before the internet brought connectivity to patrol vehicles.
The outage did not interrupt the department’s response to calls for service, which were manually tracked at each station. Radio communications and 911 lines also remained fully operational despite the outage, the sheriff said.
Sheriff Luna said the system failure “was not a complete surprise” because the department had previously experienced outages, but he added that it hadn’t been at such a significant level.
Because of the department’s antiquated system, deputy sheriffs are accustomed to having to do things the old-fashioned way, the sheriff said.
“In instances like this,” Sheriff Luna said, “it actually helps us to not be so advanced.”
