LA Sheriff’s Dispatch System Down After New Years Computer Crash

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s computer dispatch system is still down after crashing on New Year’s Day. Authorities were not clear what caused the crash, nor did they say when their systems would be back up and running.

“It’s our little Y2K,” a sheriff’s deputy he told the LA Times. The crash happened a few hours before midnight Tuesday, raising issues with the department’s ability to handle calls related to the county’s New Year’s celebrations. The LASO said that the crash appears to have occurred as a result of the system “not allowing staff to access the new year, making the CAD inoperable”.

The anonymous deputy quoted by the Times also provided more details about the problems the department had as a result of the accident: “Now, the callers have to write down all the information for each call and then the dispatch has to express all the details and the patrol unit must write everything down,” they said. “They don’t have the ability to manage people or plates. They can’t pull report numbers to give to people, so they have to call dispatch.”

Computer-aided dispatch (or CAD) systems are digital communication networks that police officers use to field 911 calls and respond to emergencies. When these systems go down (sometimes due to network errors and sometimes through cyber attacks) it forces the police to handle police work the same way they handled it in the 1990s. Police reports are filled out with a pencil and paper and calls to 911 are shared by radio. LA County and the City of Los Angeles have been the target of numerous cyberattacks, including a debilitating one ransomware attack that hit the county’s Superior Court last summer.

It is unclear when the system will come back online. “The Department is working closely with our LA County partners in the Department of Internal Services to find temporary and long-term solutions to resolve this technical issue,” an LASD statement said. “Since taking office, the Sheriff has emphasized the urgent need to improve and update our internal systems. In mid-2023, the Department issued a formal request for proposals to acquire a new, modernized and centralized CAD system that will greatly increase the our capabilities,” the statement continued.

Gizmodo has reached out to the LASD for more information and will update this story when we hear back.