County May Quit Dispatch System Rift With City Police Over Choice Of Computer System Widens

Spokane County may soon abandon a $3.2 million law-enforcement computer system run by the city Police Department.

Commissioners, who for years have fielded complaints about the computer system from criminal justice agencies, said Tuesday that it’s outdated and inefficient. It would likely be cheaper to replace the system than update it, the county’s top computer expert told commissioners.

Police brass were stunned by the development, which could leave police officers and sheriff’s deputies reliant on separate computer systems.

“For them to abandon this system, in my judgment, would be a terrible mistake and a blow to coordinated law enforcement in this county,” Assistant Police Chief John Sullivan said.

Since the 1970s, the Sheriff’s Department and Police Department have shared a computer system used for dispatching officers and tracking criminals. For much of that time, there’s been friction between the agencies.

The original system, called The Inland Empire Police Information Network, was run by the county and considered inadequate by the Police Department, which balked at its $230,000 share of the annual TIEPIN cost.

TIEPIN’s replacement, developed this decade and run by the Police Department, has been widely criticized by courts and other non-law-enforcement agencies as less efficient than TIEPIN. The county paid 40 percent of the development cost for the computer-aided dispatch/ records-management system.

Operating costs this year are estimated at $700,000, with the county paying 40 percent.

On Tuesday, county commissioners signaled they’re ready to split from the CAD/RMS system rather than pay the $400,000 the city demands before the Sheriff’s Department can put mobile computer terminals in patrol cars. The Police Department says the money is the county’s share of the cost for developing software linking mobile computers to the computer system.

For about the same cost, the county could buy a new CAD/RMS system that would include mobile terminals, Vicki Birkenthal, the county’s director of information services, told commissioners. And since the technology would be nearly a decade newer, it would likely be more efficient than the city system, she said.

“The (city) system was put together in 1990,” Birkenthal said. “The computer world looks a lot different today than it did in 1990.”

While the commissioners didn’t vote to buy a new system, each of the three said it makes little sense to invest more in the city’s system.

“It’s an antiquated system that everyone but (the Police Department) knows doesn’t work,” Commissioner Kate McCaslin said.

Police Capt. Al Odenthal, who has been in charge of CAD since 1998, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. In a recent interview, he defended it as “a superb system.”

Conflicts over computer systems that serve city and county law-enforcement agencies date to the late 1980s. Both sides agreed that TIEPIN was badly out of date by then.

The county spent several years - and hundreds of thousands of dollars of city and county money - developing a replacement. But the uncompleted TIEPIN II performed poorly when the Police Department demanded a test in 1990.

County computer experts insisted that any kinks in the program could be worked out but opted not to complete the project without police support.

County officials say they’ve had little input on how the CAD/RMS system was developed. An internal police memo written in 1995 suggests that was by design.

“It is my opinion we should make sure they remain a minor player in the new system and not allow them to exercise any control now or in the future,” then-Capt. Sullivan wrote to then-Police Chief Terry Mangan.

By the time the police system was completed, it was years behind schedule and cost more than six times the 1988 estimate.

Police officials have warned the county that by delaying installation of mobile computers, the city and county risk losing a $280,000 state grant. However, an official for the state agency that administers the grant said Tuesday that it doesn’t expire until August 2000.