LA deputies’ patrol car PCs hit in New Year software glitch • The Register
Software on the computers in America’s largest sheriff’s department’s patrol cars broke down on New Year’s Eve due to what appears to be a date-related glitch.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to The Register in the past few hours the computer technology it uses to send officers to the scene of alleged crimes is still non-functional. A spokesperson pointed out that the office had applied for funds to avoid the breakdown, but none were allocated to fix the bug. And so here we are.
We’re told deputies are still being dispatched to locations as needed, albeit via radio rather than instructions fed to them as usual via their patrol car computers.
“At approximately 2000 [Pacific Time] on December 31, the department was made aware that several patrol stations were having difficulty logging on to their patrol vehicles’ mobile digital computers (MDC),” we’re told.
“It was determined that the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) program which operates on the MDCs is not allowing personnel to log on with the new year making the CAD [system] inoperable. As a result, the department is currently operating on self-dispatch while the issue is being addressed. Calls for service are still being responded to and are being manually tracked at the station level.”
The LASD spokesperson stressed that the 911 call network was unaffected, and the radio system used to coordinate the force is working just fine. It said it’s trying “to find both temporary and long-term solutions to resolve this technical issue.”
“The system thinks it’s July of 2003, and won’t interface with any other department system,” one source told Cece Woods, editor of southern California news outlet The Current Report.
“Patrol units have been forced to start using paper logs again (similar to what was used in the 1980s). It appears the system self-destructed and/or wasn’t programmed to go beyond 2024.”
Alex Villanueva, formerly the LASD’s chief sheriff before being voted out in 2022, was incandescent on social media about the situation. He posted a letter he’d sent to the LA Board of Supervisors on just this topic in September 2022, pointing out then that the CAD system was “antiquated” and was running on computers that were no longer even supported by the manufacturers.
“The board has refused MULTIPLE requests for replacing the ancient CAD system,” he raged, adding that a 2022 report by the Los Angeles Office of the Inspector General had warned that the CAD system would “inevitably [fail],” and the platform had “far outlived its product cycle.”
Part of the problem was a lack of proper IT administrator support, the OIG report stated. The ancient (in modern computing terms) system was maintained by a single programmer who kept things running. But in 2022, the admin retired from the job on health grounds, and despite a nationwide search, the LASD couldn’t find anyone good enough to replace them, the OIG said.
Woods claimed that only two staff really knew how the system functioned – one of whom was said to be “no-ack” on New Year’s Eve, and the other was dead – and that one of the admins had warned in 2003 that the system wouldn’t be able to handle 2025.
Former sheriff Villanueva was unavailable for comment. ®
