Little Rock began posting time-delayed, computer-automated police dispatches on its website Wednesday morning, providing continuous updates on police activity for the first time since the department blocked public access to its radio communication in July.
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http://www.arkansas…">Click here to visit the Little Rock Dispatches page
The website posts the time, the nature and the location of a police incident 30 minutes after officers have been dispatched. Posts are available for viewing for eight hours.
The system -- developed by city staff members at no additional cost to the city -- does not post subsequent information on dispatches. It provides brief descriptions such as "dead body," "suspicious person," "accident" and "disturbance." Some descriptions are abbreviated.
Police spokesman Lt. Sidney Allen explained some of the descriptions in an email to media outlets Wednesday afternoon. He said that many reporters had begun monitoring the computer-automated dispatch, or CAD, and asking questions about posts.
"The CAD uses generic language to describe the call type. Dead body, shots fired and a host of other calls will be seen routinely on the CAD," he said. "Dead body can range from a hospice-care natural death, a smell that ends up being a dead animal or even a homicide. Shots fired are typically someone shooting in the air and the person is gone before the police arrive."
The Police Department cited officer safety concerns when it encrypted radio communication July 31. Cabot resident Sebastian Westerhold and Sherwood brothers Brandon and Jeremy Mullens filed lawsuits against the city the next month claiming encryption violated the state's Freedom of Information Act.
Both lawsuits are ongoing.
During a city Board of Directors meeting last week, City Manager Bruce Moore presented the computer-automated dispatch system as a compromise between police, media, the public and the city.
Wednesday, after monitoring the website throughout the day, Westerhold had a similar view of the system. He said that, excluding the posts' eight-hour life span, he was pleased with the system.
"I think it's a really nice idea and I'm really happy that Little Rock does take these concerns very seriously and they try to do something about it. ... The primary concern is for everyone to know what's going on and then they can call their [public information officer] if they're still interested," he said.
Westerhold added that he still prefers live audio of police transmissions and will continue seeking recordings of police radio communication in his lawsuit.
Brandon Mullens said that he monitored the posts for a few minutes Wednesday. He described them as vague, and he questioned their value to casual visitors of the website.
He also said the system doesn't provide enough immediacy or details on officer activity.
"I think it's really important to get the information out as soon as it happens and not 30 minutes later. ... The other thing about the live information is you can actually hear the operations of the Police Department on the job, performance or lack of performance, which is the most important part of the whole radio thing. It's making sure officers are doing what they're supposed to do as public servants," he said.
The Mullens brothers also named the city of North Little Rock as a defendant in the suit. North Little Rock police encrypted its broadcasts in January. The department began broadcasting on a 30-minute delay Friday.
Allen told reporters in his email that Little Rock police will continue to provide notifications of "major" occurrences, but further information will not be available within the first hour of a dispatch.
"The supervisors and investigators need time to research what they have before they call and notify [police spokesman] Sgt. [Cassandra] Davis or me," he said.
On Wednesday, police released information on a bank robbery suspect described as armed and dangerous three hours and 31 minutes after officers were dispatched.
According to the computer-automated dispatch system, police were dispatched at 12:32 p.m. to a "robbery just occurred" at a First Security Bank branch at 4936 W. Markham St.
Little Rock police posted on Twitter and Facebook about the holdup 25 minutes later.
Police released a description of the suspect at 4:03 p.m.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette staff members monitoring dispatches noted two instances of apparent technical problems on the website Wednesday. In one instance, the page displayed an error message and failed to load for several minutes and repeated attempts. In the other, searches of incidents in the past eight hours returned blank data fields -- where the time, nature and location of an incident is posted -- for several minutes.
Calls to Randy Foshee, city director of information technology, went to voice mail Wednesday. The voice mail referred callers to Ray Walker, city Information Technology project manager and senior programmer and analyst. Walker did not return voice mails seeking comment on the system's performance on its first day.
Foshee said last week that the system had been tested with few bugs.
Ward 7 City Director B.J. Wyrick said last week that because the system didn't provide real-time information or updated dispatch descriptions, she feared people were "not going to be able to protect themselves" from "some action that's taking place out there."
She did not return calls to her cellphone Wednesday.
Ward 5 City Director Lance Hines said last week that the system was "better than what we have," but was concerned about a lack of public input. He said late Wednesday afternoon that he hadn't had a chance to visit the website yet.
Police dispatches are available on littlerock.org by clicking "City Departments" on the sidebar, then selecting Little Rock Police and LRPD Dispatches.
Metro on 10/02/2014