LA County Sheriff's Computer Dispatch System Crashes on New Year's Eve (msn.com) 33
Bruce66423 writes: A few hours before the ball dropped on New Year's Eve, the computer dispatch system for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department crashed, rendering all patrol car computers nearly useless and forcing deputies to handle all calls by radio, according to officials and sources in the department. Department leaders first learned of the problem around 8 p.m., when deputies at several sheriff's stations began having trouble logging onto their patrol car computers, officials told The Times in a statement.
The department said it eventually determined its computer-aided dispatch program -- known as CAD -- was "not allowing personnel to log on with the new year, making the CAD inoperable." It's not clear how long it will take to fix the problem, but in the meantime deputies and dispatchers are handling everything old-school -- using their radios instead of patrol car computers.
"It's our own little Y2K," a deputy who was working Wednesday morning told The Times. The deputy, along with three other department sources who spoke to The Times about the problem, asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the record and feared retaliation.
The department said it eventually determined its computer-aided dispatch program -- known as CAD -- was "not allowing personnel to log on with the new year, making the CAD inoperable." It's not clear how long it will take to fix the problem, but in the meantime deputies and dispatchers are handling everything old-school -- using their radios instead of patrol car computers.
"It's our own little Y2K," a deputy who was working Wednesday morning told The Times. The deputy, along with three other department sources who spoke to The Times about the problem, asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the record and feared retaliation.
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The article indicates it's a login problem, perhaps related to the rollover to the new year. Assuming that's correct, the officers will still have voice communications with the dispatcher. Back in the before-times, cops got their dispatch orders via voice comms. These days, it's a computer screen, unless you can't log in. Then it's back to voice comms, and probably some pencil-and-paper action for good measure.
Re: Strange wording (Score:2)
It can still be by voice comms, for instance, if an officer is away from their car, on scene, and needs to be directed to something different.
Like Ronnie Coleman said (Score:2)
But I understand where you're coming from with that anti police statement. The solution is to get rid
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Here in reality, guns make you objectively less safe, not more safe.
The solution is to get rid of the bad apples
There are significantly more 'bad apples' than that are good ones.
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>"Here in reality, guns make you objectively less safe, not more safe."
As a generic/blanket statement, that is simply not true.
This is also completely off-topic.
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It's an objective fact, Mark. Sorry that reality disagrees with your silly fantasy.
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They would if they could
Some of them would anyway. Many others, not so much.
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Surely the computers work through a radio link too, so I'm not exactly certain what they're saying by "using a radio".
Surely you're not this obtuse? The computers are connected via 5G. "Using a radio" means the two-way land-mobile radio (LMR [wikipedia.org]) system.
Re: Strange wording (Score:2)
Typically CAD in cars use cellular systems. If you were to jam either cellular systems or regular police radio channels, expect a world of hurt in very short order. There would be fines against you and likely jail time for any lives lost.
More IOT stuff going down (Score:2)
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Could have actually been a y2k type issue. '25' is a nice number, the kind of number a person modifing a system 2[567] years ago might picked if they were doing a 'windowing' solution to year dates.
IE rather than change a data structure you add some logic, if assume 20NN; else assume 19NN.
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well the filter sure butchared that.
Less than 25 means 20NN, otherwise 19NN.
is what I wanted but slashdot ate the brackets and did some weird tag interpretation..
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The story reminds me of software that coworkers had to deal with several years ago. That software inherited a timestamp format that records times as seconds since the start of 1950 (GMT). Usually timestamps would be recorded with two binary64 floating-point numbers: one representing whole seconds and the other representing fractional seconds. Some clever people decided this was wasteful and/or prone to numerical error, so they stored the seconds as 32-bit signed integers instead.
My coworkers' reward was
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This was my first thought. Because the computerized system is probably bolted onto a much older central dispatch system rather than designed new.
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If it was a programming error, I was trying to think what is significant with 24? Well it's the number of hours in a day, so maybe they used the time field instead of a year field. They wouldn't have an error until the year 25, when it rolled over to 0. back to the year 2000.
My understanding - from experience (Score:4, Informative)
1) The CAD system was offline. This means call takers and dispatchers working on paper. It means more voice radio traffic as the mobile CAD clients can't pull incident info for the officers. No self-service person or location checks, no running plates or DLs.
This is a dispatcher's nightmare. Ten times the work with none of the resources.
2) The network likely wasn't down, so you can bet officers could still use Google maps and anything else the average person can search for on the Internet. Also, often not all police resources are integrated into the CAD query system - the officers may have direct access portals available via web browser.
The cops are fine, just a bit less coordinated. Maybe at higher risk due to lack of forewarning about suspects with a record of violence or something... But the cops usually know those people already and should treat all unknown situations as potentially dangerous anyway.
Re: My understanding - from experience (Score:2)
> This is a dispatcher's nightmare. Ten times the work with none of the resources.
Not necessarily. Most modern dispatch systems can switch to AI mode for 911 calls. (If they get flooded with 911 calls during a disaster and they can't direct to another PSAP.) I'd hope they would have thought of an AI mode for congested radio chatter as well.
Re: My understanding - from experience (Score:2)
Also, to address the "they had no tools, no DL check". Surely they are smart enough to have access to another's PSAP DL lookup tools. (And maybe even Incident Report system.)
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What I've seen is a senior officer making the call - if dispatchers can't handle a situation because their equipment isn't working, there is an agreement in place with another agency for a fail over.
Better then than me. I just threw the virtual switch when directed to.
2000 + 2025 = 666 (Score:1)
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dinosaur system (Score:5, Informative)
We responded to an RFP many years ago to replace their aging scheduling and dispatch systems with COTS solutions. They're home grown on old hardware, in bad shape, and they refuse to change their processes and requirements to leverage modern off the shelf solutions that many cities and counties use. Home grown isn't sustainable in the long term because this happens eventually, and you spend a long time limping along hoping the catastrophe never comes while you put off investment in something new. To make things worse, LA County tries to do most of its work through integrators, who don't make any software and charge an arm and a leg as a premium for really no tangible benefit other than for the county to say it's working with Gartner or Northrop Grumman whatever "big" name they think they need to get new software implemented. Their most recent RFP was posted in 2023, and they've gotten nowhere with it. Unfortunately, this is how LA County works. They limp along because they have the income to waste extra personnel on tasks that more modernized cities don't worry about because they're accepting of actively support modern software that is designed to be capable of integration with other systems.
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Which COTS?
off by 25 error (Score:2)
Typical off by 25 error.