LA County Sheriff’s Dispatch Crash Leaves Deputies Relying on Radios

The nation’s largest sheriff’s department continues to grapple with an outdated computer dispatch system that crashed on New Year’s Eve, leaving it offline as of Thursday. Why It Matters The breakdown has forced Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies to rely solely on radio communication to handle calls, authorities with the department said. The incident comes amid heightened law enforcement presence in the country’s largest cities following a terrorist attack in New Orleans and a Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump. The Las Vegas incident killed the driver and injured seven others. Meanwhile, the New Orleans incident killed 15 people, including the assailant, and injured about 30 more. Both incidents are being investigated as possible terror attacks. What To Know The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported that the dispatch issue first surfaced around 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday when deputies at multiple stations were unable to log into the mobile computers in their patrol vehicles. A Los Angeles County Sheriff logo is shown in the side of a helicopter at the Marine Corps Air Station Airshow on September 28, 2024, in San Diego, California. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department… A Los Angeles County Sheriff logo is shown in the side of a helicopter at the Marine Corps Air Station Airshow on September 28, 2024, in San Diego, California. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported a crash this week in their dispatching services. Kevin Carter/Getty Images The department said that its computer-aided dispatch system, or CAD, became inoperable as it failed to recognize the new year. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that the issue was “not allowing personnel to log on with the new year, making the CAD inoperable.” Despite the outage, officials confirmed that service remains uninterrupted with radio communications and 911 lines fully functional. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has long struggled with outdated technology. Since taking office in December 2022, Sheriff Robert Luna has highlighted the critical need to modernize the department’s internal systems. In mid-2023, the department issued a formal request for proposals to implement a new, centralized CAD system. However, recent statements have not clarified the current status of the modernization efforts. Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva shared a 2022 letter on X (formerly Twitter) in which he urged the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to allocate funding for a new computer-aided dispatch system. Villanueva’s letter warned that the aging system was incapable of meeting modern data collection requirements. What People Are Saying In a statement, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said: “…[T]he 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.” What’s Next As of Thursday, the cause of the problem and the timeline for a resolution remained unclear. Department spokesperson Nicole Nishida dismissed the possibility of a malicious attack, characterizing the outage as a “technical issue.” This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.