Riordan Calls for LAPD Technology Office

Mayor Richard Riordan, expressing disappointment at a lack of coordination and leadership in certain areas of the Los Angeles Police Department, on Friday proposed creating a high-level office to “move the LAPD from the ‘Dragnet’ era to the Age of Technology.”

In a letter to the president of the city’s Police Commission, Riordan noted that the Mayor’s Alliance for Public Safety, a private fund-raising group, has combined with federal matching funds to donate $33 million of new technology investment to the LAPD. The council, Riordan added, has approved more than $10 million in new technology, and voters approved $235 million for the department’s 911 system in a 1992 ballot measure.

Given all that investment, Riordan said, the department has not demonstrated enough progress.

“Although the LAPD’s management of its technological program has improved substantially over the last year,” he wrote, “significant barriers in the organizational structure prevent the LAPD from achieving the potential promised by the investments made by taxpayers, the Mayor’s Alliance and the Department of Justice.”

The issue of technology improvement at the LAPD has been a contentious one for years, as the Police Department tries to simultaneously expand its ranks and modernize. Riordan’s proposal represents the most far-reaching suggestion for grappling with the series of technological breakdowns that have regularly hamstrung the department--from computers that do not communicate with one another to an overwhelmed 911 system to police radios whose batteries go dead in the middle of officers’ shifts.

Responding to Riordan’s suggestion, Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher said he supports the idea in concept and promised to bring it to the full commission as soon as possible.

“It is clear that the department is being asked to shoulder a tremendous technological burden,” Fisher said. “I think this is a constructive idea for handling that.”

Fisher added that before the Police Commission take any action on the suggestion, he and his board colleagues will discuss the matter with Police Chief Willie L. Williams. The chief has supported new money for technology, but he and his department have been criticized for adopting improvements haphazardly and with too little long-term planning.

Williams declined to comment in detail on the mayor’s criticism of the department’s current efforts and only briefly addressed the substance of Riordan’s proposal.

“The chief of police agrees with the position of the mayor regarding an office of technology implementation,” Cmdr. Tim McBride, a spokesman for the department, said Friday. Williams, the spokesman added, “had formed that opinion some time ago.”

The chief would not comment on the tone of Riordan’s letter, which was sent as Williams is battling to make the case for appointment to a second five-year term as chief of the Police Department. The mayor’s criticisms of the department are at odds with Williams’ assertions of improvement.

“The lack of coordination with the Police Department and the absence of a unified technology vision have impeded the department’s ability to fully maximize the unprecedented investments that have been made to move the LAPD from the ‘Dragnet’ era to the Age of Technology,” Riordan wrote.

If the mayor’s proposal is approved, it will add a fourth person to Williams’ immediate circle of subordinates. Under the current LAPD organization, three assistant chiefs--a chief of staff, a director of operations and a director of administrative services--report directly to the chief.

Riordan’s proposal would create an office of technology implementation and would be headed by a civilian, not a police officer. That would make that person the highest-ranking civilian at the LAPD. Under Riordan’s proposal, that person would have the title of chief information officer.

Police Commissioner Edith Perez said she would support a move to consolidate technology responsibility and accountability under a single civilian manager.

“There has been a history in this department, unfortunately, of giving police officers the obligation and burden of carrying out responsibilities that are highly specialized,” she said. Technology improvements, Perez added, “should be run by a person or persons with a great deal of expertise.”

Riordan’s recommendation grows in part out of a technology assessment done by a pair of Los Angeles police officers, who, working on their own time, compiled a review of problems with LAPD organization and breakdowns in the department’s technology management. That assessment has been passed along to a number of top city leaders, and Councilwoman Laura Chick, who heads the Public Safety Committee, has asked that the report by the two officers be included in an analysis already being done by the city’s chief legislative analyst.

In her motion calling for the analysis, Chick noted that the mayor, the council and the Police Department have hired consultants, established committees and created a task force to advance LAPD technology.

“Notwithstanding those efforts and the work of a number of dedicated individuals,” Chick wrote in her motion, “a number of technical and coordinating problems continue to plague these projects.”

Chick’s frustration, shared by the mayor, is that the city does not seem to be getting its money’s worth for its significant investments in LAPD technology. And although Chick sometimes is at odds with Riordan, she said Friday that the idea of creating a centralized office to oversee technology improvements was one worth considering.

“I think it’s probably a good idea,” she said. “Something about the system that’s in place right now isn’t working.”

Police commissioners could begin discussing the idea as early as next Tuesday, when they have a regularly scheduled meeting. But final action would probably not come for some time because modifying the department’s organizational structure would require a formal vote of the board and would probably involve additional money, which would need approval by the City Council.