LA County Sheriff's Computer Dispatch System Crashes on New Year's Eve (msn.com)
- Reference: 0175816853
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/01/02/1335216/la-county-sheriffs-computer-dispatch-system-crashes-on-new-years-eve
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/our-own-little-y2k-l-a-county-sheriff-s-computer-dispatch-system-crashes-on-new-year-s-eve/ar-AA1wOIE2
> 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, [2]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.
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> 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.
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> "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.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~Bruce66423
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/our-own-little-y2k-l-a-county-sheriff-s-computer-dispatch-system-crashes-on-new-year-s-eve/ar-AA1wOIE2
More IOT stuff going down (Score:2)
Probably an expired certificate or expired domain somewhere. Or the cloud account credit card expired. All these variables and yet you expect AI to deal with it. Just wait until the future when an outage causes mass crashes of self driving cars.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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)
its just a beastmark error that computers have.
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Apparently someone failed math.
dinosaur system (Score:2)
> Ex-Sheriff Alex Villanueva also weighed in on the matter Wednesday by posting a 2022 letter to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors on X. In the letter, department leaders requested funding for a new computer-aided dispatch system, saying the existing system was so old it couldn't comply with data collection requirements.
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> For its part, the department said it was in the process of trying to upgrade the dispatch system.
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> "The Department has long faced significant challenges with outdated technology, and s
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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)
"We need the police. You can't not have the police." But most of the time they won't save you. They would if they could but they aren't superman, can't stop a speeding bullet. They can't be where they're needed, on scene for only 2% of crimes in progres. The rest of the time they are crime investigators. The only person that can save you, is you. Sadly, misguided California made guns difficult to acquire.
But I understand where you're coming from with that anti police statement. The solution is to get rid
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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 ( [1]LMR [wikipedia.org]) system.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mobile_radio_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.