City Council Approves Contract For Police Records, Dispatch Upgrades

The City Council on Monday night approved a $200,967 contract with an IT consulting firm, CIT Com, Inc., for services related to replacing the Police Department’s computerized dispatch and records-management systems.

The move had been recommended by city staff. It passed unanimously as part of the council’s consent agenda, with no discussion.

For the past 11 years, the PPD has used technology products acquired through the West Covina Services Group for its Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), Mobile Data System (MDS) and Records Management System (RMS) operations.

But last year, West Covina Services said it was halting enhancements and product support on the CAD and RMS systems by the end of 2021 – leaving the PPD with tech systems that are fully operational now and in the immediate future, but potentially on the road to obsolescence.

Enter CIT Com, a Temecula firm that won the city contract from among seven companies entering bids.

It will provide the city’s Department of Information Technology — which oversees the PPD’s tech operations, along with a range of other city IT matters – with the technical advice on how to proceed with replacing the CAD and RMS systems.

“Other law enforcement agencies have also demonstrated project efficiency by utilizing consulting services to present decision makers with critical and relevant information in the selection and implementation of an optimal CAD RMS solution,’’ according to a city staff report.

The Department of Information Technology, not the PPD, had put in the request to the City Council for the new contract.

In consultation with the PPD, the Department of Information Technology evaluated the seven bidders in a range of categories, including scope of work; project experience; staffing experience; and cost.

City staff recommended CIT com “based on the quality of the work CIT Com completed in the business needs assessment phase, and the fact that they provided the most comprehensive and highest ranked proposal in the original RFP (request for purchase),’’ the staff report said.

City staff said about $53,440 of the CIT Com contract will be spent in fiscal year 2020, to cover services related to software development and vendor evaluation. The rest of the $200,967 would be spent over the next two fiscal years.

CIT Com had emphasized the importance of complying with the emerging law-enforcement reporting requirements, including FBI’s National Incident Based Reporting System, due by 2021, and California Assembly Bill 953, the 2015 Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) system, due by 2023.

Law-enforcement agencies are required to collect information on the race, gender and age of people pulled over in traffic stops. All departments are required to begin collecting the data in 2023.

Last week, Pasadena Police Chief John Perez told Pasadena Now that his department attempted to comply with the law early, but that the current system made it impossible to do so.