Lack of maintenance, training led to failure of LAPD surveillance cameras Downtown
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According to the LA Times, LAPD's Central Station is responsible for 36 cameras, including 16 in Historic Downtown and 10 in the Fashion District.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that a majority of the surveillance cameras in downtown L.A. don't work properly – and haven't for years.
"How many crimes could there have been that nobody's talked about?" Andrew Blankstein, the story's co-author, rhetorically asked KPCC's Patt Morrison. "Detectives go out [to crime scenes] and ask for camera footage and in many cases are just told 'no.'"
According to the L.A. Times, LAPD's Central Station is responsible for 36 cameras, including 16 in Historic Downtown and 10 in the Fashion District. The other 10 were donated to the LAPD by the Central City East Association to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars. At the time, the privately-donated, publically-maintained effort was widely praised by everyone from small business owners to the city council.
"Surveillance cameras have proven to be an effective deterrent of crime throughout the city," City Councilwoman Jan Perry told KABC-TV at the time. "They are a valuable tool that can be used by our officers to apprehend criminals who prey on our community."
That was in 2006. Fast forward five years, and LAPD officials have acknowledged that the department has not been properly maintaining or monitoring the downtown cameras – mainly because they simply don't know how.
"It's like buying a car without an extended warranty," LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez Jr. told the Times. "We know the reasons it doesn't work. Now we are trying to make it work."
The cameras are operately remotely, via joysticks that make the cameras pan, tilt, turn, and zoom. What wound up happening, Blankstein said, is that sensitive cameras would break under the hands of officers untrained to use the joysticks. Without a company on call to maintain the cameras, the LAPD had no one to call for help.
In 2010, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA LA) donated an additional $25,000 to give the cameras a "technological facelift." It's unknown how much the funding helped since little effort was made to survey the cameras themselves.
According to a 2008 report released by USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development, cameras in Los Angeles "have not been analyzed by the city or some other official body to determine their efficacy."
"You always see the proverbial press conference, everyone patting themselves on the back," said Blankstein. "The problem is after that, there's really not as much thought given."
Blankstein said that as he was gathering information for the piece, more cameras were rolled out in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. All of them, according to Police Commissioner Alan Skobin, had limited maitanence contracts.
Rich on December 27, 2011, at 03:54PM – #1
Only in LA. Congrats, LAPD.
John G on December 28, 2011, at 07:08PM – #2
I work for the Dept. of Defense as an aircraft maintenance technician. The equipment I work on include communication and navigation systems. My job is very specific (and flexible) on what routine (and non-routine) duties I must perform. Everything is spelled out in federal and local base publications.
I wonder who was in charge of overseeing the routine maintenance of these cameras from the LAPD. Obviously not the officers, they are the users. This would be maintenance position in the LAPD (once the warranty/contract maintenance expired). I'm surprised these cameras were not incorporated as routine maintenance in the LAPD's equipment inventory. They (the cameras) should have been assigned under the duties of an LAPD maintenance employee or under an on-call/on-site contractor. In my federal job, equipment is accountable - It is maintained, calibrated, assigned an inventory ID, stored and/or tracked. What equipment accountability standards does LAPD's management hold?
If the CRA LA is going to dole out 25 grand for a facelift, that money would be better spent tracking down the original equipment manufacturer for maintenance training (to a few trainers who can train others) and/or negotiating a routine supply/repair cycle contract.
The real unfortunate story is how we don't know the details how LAPD manages their staff and training regarding these cameras. It probably comes down to time and money. Management needs to consider budget and personnel duty requirements when taking receipt of these cameras. If there was better management and leadership, these issues could have been dealt with when the cameras were installed (or before).
Dennis Smith on December 29, 2011, at 09:58AM – #3
Unfortunately, gaining large up front projects without securing an adequate budget for ongoing maintenance is a paradigm often followed by the LAPD. The best example of this would be the recent construction of the new LAPD headquarters that cost hundreds of millions of dollars yet included no budget for the ongoing maintenance of the much vaunted landscaping around the grounds, according to Thom Brennan of the LAPD Facilities Management Division. When the Police Protective League managed to destroy the headquarters' south lawn, there was no money to replace it for nearly a year. Pershing Square's annual lawn restoration performed every winter is a miracle of efficiency in comparison. Now, it order to do routine maintenance, DLANC recruits volunteers from the neighborhood to weed the xeriscape and do other routine garden work. I'm waiting for the DLANC to organize a volunteer effort by the tech heads and IT professionals who live in the neighborhood to come in for a few hours on a weekend morning to help the police to figure out how to use the equipment they were given years ago.
Dennis Smith on December 29, 2011, at 11:12AM – #4
Correction to the above post:
It was the Los Angeles Police Foundation that was responsible for the destruction of the original LAPD Headquarters lawn, not the Police Protective League.
My apologies.
film rob on December 29, 2011, at 01:56PM – #5
PAIGE OSBURN great reporting I hope you would do a follow up on this. John G has some interesting insight on this issue as well.