I know it's fun to play "gotcha" on the blogs and point out all the mishaps that cost the City and taxpayers mucho dinero...but I'm not taking the angle of "gotcha" here: Public safety is always the number one issue in the city, when you get down to it. And here we have a police force, forced to do battle with sophisticated, highly-organized, highly-financed, violent criminals...
And the motorcycles safety are at issue and their radios don't work properly. How about requiring them to wear blindfolds and their own handcuffs, too before we send them out on the streets to maintain a civil society?
LAPD's ASTRO RADIOS NOT SO HOT EITHER:
LAPD's handheld radios are outdated and break frequently, putting officers' lives in danger and making it easier for suspects to elude them, a police commissioner said recently. (This is a very widely-known problem that CM Zine is well aware of.)
Backed by the police union and a new internal report, Commissioner Alan Skobin said the department needs to quickly come up with a maintenance schedule and upgrade the radios, some of which are more than 13 years old.
"When you are chasing a dangerous suspect and you can't tell other officers the direction you travel, it imperils other officers and the public," he said. "Your safety lifelines are your partner, your gun, your radio and your vest. These are real safety considerations."
Patrol officers rely on the multiple-channel radios to communicate in the field. Union officials said they have received "numerous" complaints from officers whose radios malfunction.
"We are keeping them operational and going through them systemically and doing maintenance and repairs on them," said Tim Riley, head of information and communications services for the LAPD.
The department estimates that it will cost $25 million to replace the 10,500 Motorola ASTRO radios purchased between 1994 and 1996.
The company stopped making the model in 2002, and replacement parts are in limited supply and will not be manufactured after 2007. So limited are the supply and services that in 2005 the LAPD took apart 100 of its own radios to replace defective parts in other radios.
"The dilemma you run into is that we are coming up to the end of life on this radio," Riley said.
Last year, the City Council approved about $6 million to purchase about 3,200 car-mounted radios. But this year, the council declined to fund more.
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