“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
On December 31st, 2024, between eight and ten PM, the LASD’s Computer Assisted Dispatch system (CAD) began to fail. By midnight, the failure was complete. The system had died.
This mobile-digital system is a critical tool for every department member who works in a mobile environment. The immediate effect was that every deputy working patrol throughout the county of Los Angeles had lost the ability to conduct the business of ensuring the safety of over ten million residents. The immediate estimate for repairing or patching the system was that a temporary fix could take weeks, if not months.
‘We are dead in the water. We can’t run license plates. We can’t run suspects.” –Deputy working patrol after computer crash
If this had been an unexpected, totally unpredictable incident, department leadership may have been given a pass for what happened. Unfortunately for the Sheriff and his team, this had not been the case. When the system went belly up, it reverted to a date in July of 2003. According to sources, this date is significant, in that it represents a failure-fallback default for the system. Apparently, when the system received a message with the date of 2025, it did not recognize anything past 2024 and effectively went into cardiac arrest.
Problems with the antiquated CAD system have been known throughout the Department for decades. The system has undergone several “patch jobs,” where IT people managed to put a Band-Aid on an existing problem. Let me rephrase that; for at least the past two decades, the department has placed Band-Aid after Band-Aid on the numerous issues that have faced the system. Gee, I wonder why it finally decided to fail.
Lee Baca knew about it, Jim McDonnell knew about it, Alex Villanueva knew about it, and our current Sheriff, Robert Luna, knew about it, and let’s not forget, the fact that LA County Board of Supervisors knew about it. With so many administrations involved, exactly where do we determine who gets the prize for this failure?
Let’s just cut to the chase. It is documented that on September 16, 2022, then-Sheriff Villanueva submitted a comprehensive request to the Board of Supervisors, requesting the funding to replace the antiquated, problem-prone system. In his request, Villanueva noted:
“Due to the antiquated CAD system and the associated technical and capability limitations, the Department has been unable to update/modify the system to fully comply with state, legal mandates related to data collection and documentation.”
In his request, Villanueva also wrote that the Office of Inspector General had published a report dated June 10, 2022, noting that a part-time consultant working with the LASD in regards to the CAD system was retiring and ending his association with the Department, thereby “leaving the Sheriff’s Department and its primary computer system with no lifeline for when the CAD system inevitably fails, given that it has far outlived its product life cycle. A large-scale failure of the CAD system would not only affect recordkeeping functions, it would also affect the ability of deputies to communicate in the field, the dispatcher’s ability to relay information to deputies, and many other essential functions deputies rely on to perform their jobs.”
You might want to read that last paragraph again.
There is no way in the world where either the BOS or the current sheriff can claim they were unaware of the problems facing the CAD system. Villanueva has recently stated that he had “personally” warned Luna about the critical state of the CAD system. Still, nothing was done.
Even more damning is the February 12, 2018, letter from LA County Chief Information Officer, William S. Kehoe (who worked for CEO Sachi A. Hamai), directing the Board of Supervisors to work with the Sheriff’s Department in their efforts to replace the CAD system. The existing BOS at the time consisted of Sheila Kuehl, who was serving as the Chair, Hilda Solis, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Janice Hahn, and Kathryn Barger. Again, nothing was done, and a new system did not materialize.
I have been informed that the Department has submitted a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the replacement of the system, and that they have narrowed the process down to a handful of potential vendors. To this I say, so what? Over two years into this tenure as sheriff, and Luna still has not managed to get the system replaced? He is a day late and a dollar short. Based on what has happened over the past couple of days, it’s also crystal clear that they did not have the foresight to have a practical plan in place.
Based on the information, I have no issue in giving Baca, McDonnell, and Villanueva a “pass” on this debacle. While they certainly should have corrected this long-standing problem years ago, we have concrete evidence that at least two sheriffs, Villanueva and McDonnell, had taken meaningful steps to get something done.
It seems that the BOS had simply thumbed their noses at these requests and moved on to whatever their priorities were at the time. Public and officer safety did not appear to be one of them. We all recall the common dustups between Villanueva and the BOS. Is it possible that they withheld replacing the system out of spite?
This morning we heard the news that the Department has located a couple of computer wizard people who may be able to get the broken system back on line. That’s great for the short term, but again, yet another Band-Aid on top of the others? How can this be even remotely acceptable to the Department, the BOS, and most importantly, the hard-working deputies, who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to keep us safe?
The bottom line is this: the epic failure of the CAD system is also an epic failure of the LASD leadership as well as the Board of Supervisors, who both share the blame for what has occurred.
Think about this. Even after a vendor is approved, it will take months to have a new system installed. How long will it take to test the new system out? Will it be rolled out to all stations at once, or will they need to do pilot projects and beta testing along the way? Our box of Band-Aids must be nearly empty by now. When will the Sheriff and BOS finally decide that law enforcement, public and officer safety, and advanced technology need to finally rise to the forefront?
Personally, I’m not holding my breath.
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