Smooth Move
What could possibly happen if you don't have your own technicians in house?
- The whole arrest system for the entire city crashed last night. Officers sitting in stations because no one could process prisoners for hours. No one would make the decision to revert to paper. Word is that the ISD Commander (JL) [laid] off all the civilians that worked on the system and farmed the work out to an outside company. They took forever to respond. I think when I left work at 0800, they were still down. So we are shorthanded, and those that still make arrests are sitting around wasting time because the system they use to process prisoners is down.
If they don't think the system used to process prisoners is important enough that they farm it out to outsiders, what is the message they are sending out to us? Just saying. Stay safe.
No arrest reports, no photographs, no fingerprints, lines of prisoners headed out the door. It was an amazingly bad display of bureaucratic incompetence and no one in charge willing to make the call to go to paper reports for the moment. But hey, we saved money somewhere, right?
Labels: we got nothing
posted by SCC at 12:03 AM
65 Comments:
There's actually an order in place addressing this problem, which happens at LEAST a couple of times a year.
Of course, everybody's afraid to be the one to make the decision.
Especially now, when they're just holding their collective breath, hoping to survive JPWeis without being demoted, dethroned or decapitated.
Did the voo-doo predication analysis crystal ball system recover okay?
The Mugshot system is still down They want you to xerox a photo id & fax or take pictures on digital cameras download the pictures& email them to ident. Cutting edge technology, bring Luberman back the wonderkid can fix anything
I work in tech, projects management to be more specific. This quote has disturbing implications.
"Word is that the ISD Commander (JL) [laid] off all the civilians that worked on the system and farmed the work out to an outside company."
First off, dirty little secret about tech, these days. Expect a SIGNIFICANT amount of the work done by US tech companies- small, medium or large- to be farmed to India or elsewhere in the far east. The standard operating model these days is to hire a couple in-house coders, a projects manager or two, get a cheap workspace Downtown, then have all the actual 'work' done overseas, where a coder that would cost $60/hr here can be had for $10. Naturally, the level of quality originating from these places can be very poor and the domestic clean-up men who are expected to fix and tweak the garbage made by the low level outsourced labor cannot catch everything.
Secondly, when you're dealing with code infrastructure that handles sensitive data (like police records), it's never a good idea to ship it away from the persons we already trust to handle that information and particularly to a private entity that may be passing the buck yet again to workers in a 3rd world country. I don't know whether the contracted company uses sourced labor or not- there are a few left who don't- but odds are, they probably do.
This is why you hire in-house to handle your critical information systems. It's all about response. Things break in information technology, no different than in heavy industry. Do you want the response to be in house, or do you want it to be hundreds of miles away in Indianapolis? Or Indonesia?
Whoever made that decision should be held to account for it, because this is the natural outcome of farming out your information technology services instead of doing it in-house. All's well and dandy until something goes wrong, then you get fucked and wonder why.
IOD system is crazy too! 4-data can't even reset a password for it and you have to email the finance comittee to get help. We have how many different data systems? and none of the work together or right? How much waste is there in salaries and productivity with all the time we spend waiting for the systems to be corrected or fixed?
Well I did not believe this until I saw it from my own 2 eyes. It appears that the great, tactical, SOS replacement MSF are implementing a new tactic on the streets in the 011 District..."IMPOUND FOR A GUN"
These hard charging MSF hair gels are pulling over cars and threaten to impound vehicle they offer the "deal" of...."get me a gun and I WONT impound your car".
Listen hair gels. This new "tactic" of yours is going to do nothing but jam you up!! Atleast when the real SOS did a deal they had the guy on FELONY charges! (that was about 5 years ago when we could do real police work)
Bottom line boys and girls, wait... let me speak in MSF lingo..."boyz and girlz" making deals for guns ESPECIALLY if ur not even getting them on REAL charges is going to F*CK you one of these days.
Wise up and be just continue with 2 cars (6 officers) pulling over cars, then ALL of u bringing it in to 011th District and processing ur (1) bag weed or TVB. The "gun" deals are just showing how much you don't know about this job!!
Hey Glen Popiela - 011, 3rd Watch Candidate for FOP Treasurer - Team Shields I have a few questinos/points for you.
I will not repost your long post but will ask you a few questions regarding it.
While MCCarthy may have started in 011 and worked there a few years and obtained a degree he has still worked "cushy" spots because of who his family is. For ever one McCarthy, there are 100's of PO's who obatained education as much as him and more who are still working in district law enforcement because they are not connected to be people like he is.
As for your facts and statistics about people attending union meetings. Please tell everyone how many meetings most of the people on the ticket attended before 2010? How many have they attending outside the minimum needed to run? How many of them have held unit rep position let alone watch rep spot?
Have you every been a watch rep/unit rep? Has Shields? Has McCarthy? Has Gorman? Has Curry? The answer for all five of you is no!
You have the most time with 19 years than anyone on the ticket running for an inside spot and how many meeting have you attended in those 19 years Glen? Just above the minimum to run!
What is your experience to be Treasurer?
What is Rivero's experience to be Financial Secretary?
What is McCrathy experience to run our legal fund other then having a law degree? Has he ever been inside a court room in front of a judge?
Anonymous said...
The Mugshot system is still down They want you to xerox a photo id & fax or take pictures on digital cameras download the pictures& email them to ident. Cutting edge technology, bring Luberman back the wonderkid can fix anything
2/11/2011 12:51:00 AM
First off, I wouldn't let Huberman do anything for me other than maybe select my wardrobe for going out on the town and for sure, my drapes and furniture, he has the eye for stylish things.
The email address for the mugshots is full and won't accept the mugshot emails. Sigh, we must be new at this and do it for free, because if they were getting paid to do these tasks, I think they might get fired because they are putzes. Ooops, I forgot, we are a world-class agency. 3rd world that is.
The internal layoffs mentioned wouldn't have affected whether CLEAR and MugShot were up in 5 minutes or 500. Those systems ARE handled in-house, and they are a little more complicated than throwing a switch or rebooting your desktop Optiplex.
Yes the city uses outsourcing for helpdesk and vendor support- but guess what- you're talking to Rochester and Salt Lake City if you call 4DATA. And in the worse case scenario where it seems like you're speaking to a foreigner, its because they've taken their big brain and immigrated and are currently working out of the Daley Center. Hell, from where I'm standing, response times and trivial requests are so slow exactly because the CPD won't give their tech partner more scope in its operations like the rest of the city's departments.
Occasionally the CPD is going to have to use pencils; blaming outsourcing is passing the buck to a boogeyman.
So does that mean Crime is down? LOL
But have no fear those connected
outside companies that were hired will be paid far more than the salaries of the people who were laid off.
JL is a genius. Just ask him.
The idiots are the ones who leave him in charge.
WM
Why are people still making arrests?
The system is down every damn day if not AIRA, its Iclear, if not Iclear its the CAD nothing ever works
go back to paper arrests,case reports,and inventoriries!faster and easier!you still have to make copies of computer crap anyway!
Big secret: Goldstein's computer crashed the whole system when it went all HAL on him and tried to eject him out of a POD. It wasn't pretty.
Ease up on outsourcing the development and support to outside companies. My experience with others agencies in the state of Illinois (little bits in Chicago) is that when people try to do things in-house, it's no better and usually immeasurably worse. The issue is they probably didn't pay the bill for supporting the software, or went cheap on the support contact (Next Business Day vs 24/7/365 support), or they chose a company that was and is ill-prepared to do the job. I work with vendors all the time that provide world-class 24/7 support and fix most problems before they occur.
Well its true, the city either laid off or moved the people taking care of most of the systems. The mugshot system was taken care of by someone who quit long ago. Now there is only a handful of people taking care of the systems that have no idea how they work. Lewin couldn't open a computer if he had to and thinks RAM is a bar on the northside. No backups, Clear is soon to be dead, car camera is on its last leg and mug shot broken. Welcome to CPD.
We had to take the prisoners Mugshots with digital cameras from from 1999....
.... they did not work
CPD sent 125 prisoners to Bond Court with no photo's. You may not know this but the jail or the courts don't print anyone, they use the arresting agencies prints. With no photos at Bond Court, no positive ID. Anyone can change ID eg. someone charged with murder changing with a disorderly and receiving a I Bond. The trickle down affect effects the Sheriff's, ASA's and the Court.
The mugshot system is still down so last night they came out with an order to use a digital camera and take photos of the prisoners holding a sheet of paper with their CB #'s on it.
The problem is......NO DIGITAL CAMERAS HAVER BEEN ISSUED.
I think they wanted us to use our own or go buy one.
We (as a group) used to make fun of the nerdy, techy cops down at Data Systems. I apologize profusely.
Oracle was doing some (all? most?) of the work on CLEAR.
Of course there is the perennial City of Chicago problems with paying bills on time and the private sector, at least those not on the take, wants to get paid, or else your computers don't always work so well.
There was a minority "owned" company that had some of the work, I don't know if they still are a vendor or not. That was Sayers Computer Source/Sayers Group. As in Gayle Sayers, the Kansas Comet, the former Bear.
I'll take a Punjab merchant's master degreed son working for peanuts anyday over someone connected to the Daley clan...or any of the Aldercreatures, or whoever Jody the Pumpkin head brought in.
Why complain about silly little bosses? The computer is in charge. It will tell you when you can leave.
Great tec, from the stone age,and to think how much did luberman get paid off for this garbage?
Whoever made that decision should be held to account for it, because this is the natural outcome of farming out your information technology services instead of doing it in-house
-------
Young man, you best stay in the private sector because this quote makes absolutely no sense to us city workers. Decision maker? Held to account? I can't understand these phrases. Isn't it easier if we just promote the one to blame so he doesn't make the same mistake again?
Everyone on this blog complains about the "house mice" at HQ who belong on the street, what they don't understand is that includes alot of sworn who are very skilled in IT, many of who built all these clear systems and are the only ones who know the inner workings of them and how to fix them. When the bosses say send them back, we go back and it takes days to figure out how to fix it and maintain it, where it would have took the sworn who have knowledge of the systems minutes to fix it.
You got what you asked for!
The real problem is not who does the coding or where it is done but that it is very hard to get good parameters for just what is needed for any coding job.
Most of the work is not really coding in any case. It is figuring out what has to be done, how to store and access data, and just how the people who enter, access, and use the data will do so.
In most cases, the coding itself is the easy part, and the least problematic. It's also usually the easiest to farm out, whether to someone in India or down the road. Most of the time the issues with coding end up being poorly thought out processes the coders are given to implement.
What ends up happening is that the coders end up making a lot of decisions about the processes because the analysts do not do a very good job upfront describing how the process as a whole is supposed to work.
A simple example is that I once saw a document that specified the F12 key was to be used for a specific function. But the terminal being used only had function keys 1 to 8. How do you make that work?
Hey, they are talking about raising the minimum wage to $10 a hour, so then, can we hire minimum wage people here to do the tech stuff? In some weird way it works for me. I am sure our alderpeoples would think it logical.
I thought the people running the CPD were I.T. professionals...........they sure ain't policemen.
Everything is going crazy with the cold and not real backup plan.
Instructions last night to lock-ups.
Take a digital mugshot photo if you can get your hands on a digital camera.
Then email the photos to ISD.
Except the email mailbox for ISD is FULL and can't take anymore!
What a way to run a major police departent.
But, I bet the "BEAN" in what will someday be Richard M. Daley Memorial Park is clear of snow, not corroded by salt and shinny as a new penny.
What do you expect from a unit staffed with a bunch of 5 year wonders that are too scared to work the street.
And why isn't there any back-up systems in place for when a situation like this occurs? And it WILL occur again. Computers are doomed to fail. Hard drives have motors. They have a mean lifespan.
Whoever designed this garbage system with no redundancy built in, needs to be fired!
Never admit the system is down. When the civilians were laid off numerous data bases were affected. But the command staff refuses to acknowledge the mess.
We have not had a working printer in Area 5 for over six months. We have been printing reports, etc from a fax machine....and that is no B.S. This whole fucking city is broke and it's only going to get worse.
2/11/2011 04:26:00 AM
you left out 'security', as in, exactly who might have access to this data?
and of what use might it be put to?
Such bullshit!!!!!! This city is not prepared for any major threat or catastrophe.
Sure the dog and pony show look great at the 911 center, but there is No leadership, no respect for rank and no direction.
God forbid 9-11 would have taken place here.
Please stay safe brother's and sister's.
Wait until they privatize 911 communications and layoff all the 911 people. The new operators and dispatchers will be in India.
Desk Sgt gard in 011on midnights is going nuts over this I love it when he can't handle a problem. Talk about a crab ass!!
New pdt's have microphones in them.
As of last night I still couldn't pull up Iclear photos.
Still no photos 48 hours later.
Great job Lewin.
I hope you got something out of the connected contractor deal
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Everyone on this blog complains about the "house mice" at HQ who belong on the street, what they don't understand is that includes alot of sworn who are very skilled in IT, many of who built all these clear systems and are the only ones who know the inner workings of them and how to fix them. When the bosses say send them back, we go back and it takes days to figure out how to fix it and maintain it, where it would have took the sworn who have knowledge of the systems minutes to fix it.
You got what you asked for!
2/11/2011 10:22:00 AM
Great post. I worked at 35th st for 6 months out of my 20 year career. I met some good Coopers there and also some not so good ones, just like in a district I have found through my career that the people who complain the most about the "House mouse" are the biggest dogs on the street.
new stars have gps and a hidden mic
in the pin , be carefull what you say and where you go
on or off duty
Anonymous Anonymous said...
The mugshot system is still down so last night they came out with an order to use a digital camera and take photos of the prisoners holding a sheet of paper with their CB #'s on it.
The problem is......NO DIGITAL CAMERAS HAVER BEEN ISSUED.
I think they wanted us to use our own or go buy one.
2/11/2011 09:04:00 AM
----------
Then they're holding out on you. Every tact team got a digital camera to use for search warrants.
Well its true, the city either laid off or moved the people taking care of most of the systems. The mugshot system was taken care of by someone who quit long ago. Now there is only a handful of people taking care of the systems that have no idea how they work. Lewin couldn't open a computer if he had to and thinks RAM is a bar on the northside. No backups, Clear is soon to be dead, car camera is on its last leg and mug shot broken. Welcome to CPD.
2/11/2011 08:14:00 AM
Anonymous 011 said...
We had to take the prisoners Mugshots with digital cameras from from 1999....
.... they did not work
2/11/2011 08:16:00 AM
--------
You have to clear the memory out. They have 24mg memory sticks in them.
I just draw a stick man picture of my arrestees.
We know there are very smart IT people working at HQ's. I just believe that for every smart IT there are 8 or 9 morons standing around picking their noses and signing some smart persons reports. What say you, Super Smart IT person?
That's why everything gets shut down. Because there are not 300 people working down there. More like 30 or 40 that actually know what they're doing.
@ 10:27:00 AM
I'm the guy who posted @ 04:26:00 AM and agree with your sentiment. I work with clients developing process protocols and no doubt, the hardest part is getting them to articulate what they want their system to do, so it doesn't involve having to go back and revamp the fucking thing 30 times as they play 'figure it out while we go along...'
I wouldn't agree that the code infrastructure is the 'easy part'. Government systems are in the age of integration and Postels Law has been ignored in government systems for quite some time.
I'd also strongly disagree with the guy who suggested that an in-house team is 'less effective' at responding to a system crisis than a sourced team. I can only assume you don't have much experience with IT project management.
For those who think $7.50 hourly India code labor is equal to what we have here in the US, laugh. Just a massive belly laugh. India produces some real IT talent, that's for sure, but those guys aren't the ones getting the farm jobs. They're the ones here on H1b's working for Microsoft, or, our company.
Want your critical police systems made in India, complete with backdoor exploits, stability issues, etc? Farm it out to a "Local IT Company".
Still no photos 48 hours later.
Great job Lewin.
I hope you got something out of that connected contractor deal.
Update:
Thousands of dollars spent already
attempting repairs.
Still down 60+ hours and counting $'s
Still no photos
JL How much did we save on the layoffs?
I thought Lewiniski and Goldsticker were the computer gods?
I think not.
WM
A simple example is that I once saw a document that specified the F12 key was to be used for a specific function. But the terminal being used only had function keys 1 to 8. How do you make that work?
2/11/2011 10:27:00 AM
WTF! Duh! You hit F4 and F8 at the same time, or F7 and F5, or F6 twice real fast! That will give you F12! It's simple math! You must be a former CPS attendee? I did not say graduate or alumnus because there are so few of them!
new stars have gps and a hidden mic
in the pin , be carefull what you say and where you go
on or off duty
2/11/2011 11:10:00 PM
--
Oh! I'm afraid! And you can't spell! Too many nitwits on this department...
new stars have gps and a hidden mic
in the pin , be carefull what you say and where you go
on or off duty
*************
Yeah, and ticket books have built in cameras and microphones.
C'mon! They can't even handle a simple mugshot system let alone saving all our conversations. You must be one of those conspiracy theorists who believes we have chips embedded in us which they use to torture us. You listen to too much Coast to Coast with ARt Bell. LOL!
I just draw a stick man picture of my arrestees.
2/12/2011 01:52:00 AM
a realist, i see.
new stars have gps and a hidden mic
in the pin , be carefull what you say and where you go
on or off duty
2/11/2011 11:10:00 PM
how about the new suppositories?
....just like in a district I have found through my career that the people who complain the most about the "House mouse" are the biggest dogs on the street.
2/11/2011 09:57:00 PM
it's human nature to dis the competition.
This is just too funny and sweet justice for the people let go and just plain fucked with by this moronic City administration who invented and worked on the CLEAR system!
My "China Man" Left Unit 125, Information Services because he was tired of the "idiot bosses" like Commander Lewin, and the stupid city policy of mandatory furlough days, let alone the low pay!
Well assholes guess what, he now makes over $200,000 in the private sector, better benefits with no furlough days and lives in Naperville, IL. happliy!
I'm sure for a nice fee, he can get I-CLEAR Mugshot, Auto Arrest and Such up and running in no time! But the stupid bosses of this city have a chip on their shoulder and can't admit defeat! U get what you pay for dummies in HQ.
Who's laughing now jagoffs?!
Da Pelon
The I T police officers, responsable for AIRA and clear, at headquarters, are not on the street, some have just been redirected to other units or OEMC. So nice try. The system will eventually work smoothly once the city pays its bills and the civilian/department workers learn to workout the kinks of the system.
Anonymous said...
Why are people still making arrests?
2/11/2011 07:09:00 AM
because its better than going to 10 baby mama drama bs domestics a night
Commander of ISD. JL. is a self centered little wimp, PERIOD. yeshe is smart but can't and won't make a single decision. He bases evewrything on money, afraid of his own shadow, has all this high tec crap sitting around and won't issue it out, the fire dept will spend money, get new readios and gives this stuff out for use. I know for a fact that the dept. purchased 700 new radios, but the cheap ass Capt. Marty, who is johnathans sidekick was too cheap to buy the long cord mics, so they just sit until someone has the balls to buy mics. PS. the radios were bought with federal grant money. Spend the money and issue the goods ASSHOLES
new stars have gps and a hidden mic
in the pin , be carefull what you say and where you go
on or off duty
2/11/2011 11:10:00 PM
The new stars do not have gps or a hidden mic in them. They are called " smart badges" and are made by Blackington, the same company that makes your current star. They contain a computer chip that will be programed with the officers information such as emp. number and service date. They will be used to "swipe' for work and court. If the star is lost the chip will be disabled and it will be rendered inactive.You can read all about it on the Blackington site.
For sure the new stars have GPS in them. I use mine to follow all my ex-husbands around town. I just shove my star inside their vehs and stalk away. That how I always know where all the inspectors are too.
Aira down again last night. Seems like it goes down at least twice a week.
Mugshot still down.
And we got rid of the people who can fix it?
Anonymous said...
CPD sent 125 prisoners to Bond Court with no photo's. You may not know this but the jail or the courts don't print anyone, they use the arresting agencies prints. With no photos at Bond Court, no positive ID. Anyone can change ID eg. someone charged with murder changing with a disorderly and receiving a I Bond. The trickle down affect effects the Sheriff's, ASA's and the Court.
2/11/2011 08:44:00 AM
Fortunately it is not quite that simple.
Post a Comment
<< Home