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LAPD On Citywide Tactical Alert Following 'Technical Issues' At Dispatch Center
(Photo by vapi photographie via the Flickr Creative Commons).
A citywide tactical alert was put in place by the Los Angeles Police Department Friday morning following "technical issues" at an LAPD dispatch center.
The L.A. Times reports that the technical issues in question had disrupted police service calls, making it so that dispatchers were unable to send calls directly to the computers in police cars. They instead had to radio call officers directly from individual police stations. According to the Times, the glitch hasn't affected 911 calls or general police service
An LAPD spokesperson told LAist that the tactical alert was still in place as of 1:30 p.m. Friday, and the technical issues have not yet been fixed. The tactical alert is a precautionary measure that downgrades lower priority calls.
"Basically, it means that we're not responding to any non-coded calls," LAPD Officer Sal Ramirez told LAist. "We have non-coded, Code 2 and 3 calls," Ramirez explained, with Code 2 and 3 calls both being considered urgent (the use of lights and sirens is known as a "Code 3 response").
"For example, if you call the police and say there's this bike outside my house, we're not going to respond to that," Ramirez continued.
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