LOS ANGELES, Calif.–The state’s attorney general was in Los Angeles to officially involve her office in a Southern California law enforcement partnership aimed at creating a statewide database of information to help reduce crime.
Attorney General Kamala Harris also held a closed-door meeting with about 200 area law enforcement heads to discuss new policing technologies and best practices.
She signed a memorandum of agreement for the state Department of Justice to join 24 law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff and Los Angeles Police Departments, in using the so-called Community Based Information System, or CBIS.
The database allows beat cops, sheriff’s deputies and now Department of Justice officials to access a wide cross-section of demographic and economic information about a community, such as employment data or the number and location of homeless shelters, liquor stores, health centers, schools or libraries.
Harris said the database, which was launched by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca last September, helps agencies know “in an accurate, effective and swift way” what a community’s policing needs are.
“It is about addressing the fact that officers on the street do a lot that is interactive and helpful to that community above and beyond arresting a suspect,” she said. “It is often about helping a person in need.”
Baca described CBIS as “a library of resources” that beat cops have not had access to before.
“The issue that we all struggle with in reducing crime is public trust,” he said. “So when the officer is able to do something positive instead of just walk away, then what you have is a solution.”
The database was funded by $500,000 in California Emergency Management Agency grants. It will cost about $38,000 per year to maintain.
Los Angeles County hired a technology consulting firm, Archimedes Global, to evaluate if and how CBIS is helping departments improve policing. A spokeswoman said the firm would begin assessing how LAPD is using the database beginning this fall.
