CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - INTELLIGENCE
Dec. 19, 2007 - 8:23 p.m.
Southern California Police Forces Linking Up With Feds, Each Other

By Daniel Fowler, CQ Staff

Information-sharing software called COPLINK will soon enable Los Angeles area law enforcement agencies to more effectively exchange information with each other and federal partners.

The Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and police departments in other cities in the county are collaborating on the initiative, and the technology will be incorporated into the Los Angeles fusion center, according to LAPD officials.

"It's important because crime doesn't exist within certain boundaries of cities," Michael P. Downing, deputy chief commanding officer of the LAPD's Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau. "It's transient. It moves. It's fluid."

Tim Riley, the LAPD's chief information officer, said the Los Angeles system will feature three nodes: One for LAPD, one for the sheriff's department, which provides police services to more than 40 cities, and one for the independent police departments in the more than 40 other cities in the county.

In the first quarter of 2008, Riley said he expects to have all three nodes tied together and linked with nodes in Orange and San Diego counties. He said some of the nodes would be connected earlier and not all communities will be online in first quarter 2008. "We are establishing the whole infrastructure," he said. "The final piece is to then tie them together."
COPLINK is a Tucson, Ariz.-based Knowledge Computing Corp. software suite that is now used in 600 jurisdictions around the country, according to the company's president and chief executive officer, Robert Griffin. He said the various jurisdictions have the ability to negotiate memorandums of understanding to share their information with each other.

Without COPLINK, information sharing in Los Angeles is "basically based on relationships and phone calls and independent inquiries," Downing said. "This will make it more seamless." Downing said various agencies currently have their own databases, but they "don't talk to each other."
In connection with the Los Angeles program, the Department of Homeland Security is developing a regional information sharing capability that will enable it to transmit information to the Department of Justice and to COPLINK and receive information from them using the DOJ's communication protocol standard, according to a DHS spokesman.
"What the technology solution will allow is greater efficiency in how we share the information that we are sharing already," the DHS spokesman said.

"We can't operate in silos," Downing said. ". . . The only way we can get better and get in the area of prediction and look at crimes that may be fueling bigger, more violent, more horrendous crimes such as terrorism is to share information with one another so we can connect the dots and see things that might not be apparent with one data set."

Riley said LAPD is encouraging other neighboring communities to get information sharing systems as well.

Daniel Fowler can be reached at dfowler@cq.com.
Source: CQ Homeland Security
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