Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Police Used Laptops To Duck Calls

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 13:12:42 -0400

Police Used Laptops To Duck Calls
By STEPHEN THOMPSON [email-masked]
Published: Aug 6, 2004

ST. PETERSBURG - With laptop computers becoming as familiar a
crime-fighting tool as handguns and police dogs, two dozen St.
Petersburg patrol officers found a way to crack a database to find out
what calls were about to come over the radio.

A few officers are suspected of using the advance warning of unpleasant
assignments to make themselves unavailable.
One such officer, Phillip Peyton, used someone else's password to access
the system the night of Jan. 30, according to internal affairs documents
made public Thursday. He learned dispatchers were about to send officers
to a suicide call, the documents say. A 52-year-old woman going through
a divorce had hanged herself in a bedroom closet with pantyhose.
``For the love of God,'' Peyton messaged another officer on the laptop
in his cruiser. ``Do a X-50 right now or west end.''

An X-50 is a traffic stop, which typically takes much less time than
dealing with a death. ``West end'' is code for going to the bathroom -
because bathrooms at the police station historically have been in the
western half of the building.

Officer Ann Sener, who received the message, made a traffic stop. Peyton
was on a call, so he, too, technically was unavailable, documents show.
All told, 32 St. Petersburg police employees, most of them officers,
were believed to be involved in the improper accessing of the
department's computer-aided dispatch system, the department announced
Thursday after wrapping a months-long investigation.

That number does not include the half-dozen or so former officers who
have gone to other agencies, including the Tampa Police Department, and
declined to cooperate, internal affairs investigators say.

Only Peyton, Sener and another officer, who now works undercover in vice
and narcotics, were suspected of using the system to avoid handling a
call, the documents say.
On Thursday, Peyton was suspended for three days.

Sener was given a written reprimand. She acknowledged it appeared she
was shirking the suicide, but she was adamant that she was looking for a
car to stop when Peyton's message appeared on her laptop screen.

The undercover officer, who admitted avoiding a call regarding an
unattended death, was suspended for two days.

The two officers who handled the suicide had suspected some of their
colleagues were using the dispatch system to dodge calls, and they
complained to Sgt. Mark Degan. But Degan didn't bring the matter to
internal affairs - and for that he was suspended for five days.

Bill Beal was the dispatcher whose password many officers used to access
the system.

``Kane11'' was a variation on the name of his great-grandfather, Thomas
Kane, a Chicago Police Department captain who later started a security
firm. Beal told internal affairs investigators he didn't share the
password with anyone.

But an officer said Beal gave it to him two years ago. Beal said he
didn't remember doing so. Beal received a written reprimand.
Twenty-four other employees - including 22 officers - agreed to accept
written reprimands after acknowledging they used passwords of others to
get into the system, bringing the number of those punished to 29. Three
others were cleared of wrongdoing.

Technically, the officers admitted to trying to ``subvert'' the agency's
security measures. But in internal affairs interviews, they said they
had used the system to respond to a call before it was dispatched and
others said they used it to keep track of their fellow officers.

In a memorandum to his department circulated Thursday, Police Chief
Chuck Harmon told his troops they eventually might have access to
computerized dispatch information after the department finishes
negotiating with a new vendor.

The reason access was cut off some months ago was that so many officers
were using it, the system was being slowed down, Harmon said.
Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 823-3303.
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBEKWZRJXD.html

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