Police Chief Defends Computers Despite Woes

Despite reports of serious glitches in a new $16-million computer system, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams said Wednesday that the system has been widely used and is successful at improving officer efficiency.

In a letter to Mayor Richard Riordan, Williams acknowledged system problems but said “they are common to all large technology implementations and have not diminished the value of this system to the department.�

The system was funded by the Mayor’s Alliance for a Safer L.A., a group of private contributors brought together by Riordan to bring the Police Department into the computer age and reduce the time officers spend on paperwork.

The system has so far been connected to 13 police divisions, providing 700 work stations. When it is completed in June, it is expected to be connected throughout the department with 1,250 workstations.

Word of the computer’s problems first arose Monday when Police Cmdr. Bill Russell told the City Council’s Public Safety Committee that the system is plagued by glitches, prone to crashing, and is currently operating at 40% of capacity.

Although the system was tested at the West Valley Division in Reseda, it was expanded to 12 other police divisions before the “bugs were worked out,� he told the committee.

“We built it on the fly and whether we should have done that is neither here nor there,� Russell said.

But criticism of the system is a sore subject for Riordan, who announced the formation of the alliance and the group’s ability to raise $16 million in donations with much fanfare last year.

City Hall sources say that the mayor is worried because some of the donations have yet to be collected and he fears that the contributors may balk due to adverse publicity about the system.

After reporting the computer problems to the council committee, Russell was instructed by the mayor’s office to report to alliance representatives on a bimonthly basis on the status of the system.

In his report to the council committee, Russell said the system has crashed each time it was added at a new division and has had problems handling large amounts of data.

But a confidential report obtained by The Times suggests that problems with the system are even worse than Russell suggested. The report, by a top police official who asked to remain anonymous, indicates one of the biggest problems is that the department has not received enough expert support to run the system and solve problems that arise. “Applications, when they run, are frustrating, prone to crashing and have no ongoing committed development, support or refinement effort,� according to the report.

The report goes on to say that only half of the 3,000 employees who are supposed to use the computers have completed the 16-hour training classes.

Because of lack of technical expertise, the system in the West Valley station has “crashed� 15 times in the past few months, losing all the work that was in progress, the report said.

Despite the glitches, the system already provides police the ability to write reports on computers and file copies into a main-frame system. Police previously wrote most reports the old-fashioned way--on paper forms that were filed in folders.

The system also allows police to send electronic messages to each other, access local, state and federal criminal databases, and research state criminal and civil codes.

“Even at this early stage of implementation, the computer network is enabling officers to spend far less time in the stations doing manual administrative tasks,� Williams said in the letter to Riordan.

One patrol officer from the San Fernando Valley said that when the system is functional, it dramatically reduces paper work for police.

“When it works, it’s great,� said the officer, who asked not to be named. “When we get into the system, we can do things we could never do before.�