A software system that was blamed for\u2002helping a California dad evade prosecution\u00a0on child sex abuse allegations has also failed to perform basic functions for law enforcement in at least three different states, according to officials and court documents reviewed by NBC News.\u00a0\u00a0
Officials who have used Spillman Technologies\u2019 software in California, Colorado and Texas allege it has crashed in the midst of 911 calls, forcing dispatchers to frantically take notes by hand while emergencies were unfolding. They say it has failed to provide the fastest routes for traveling to the scenes of emergencies, costing precious time for first responders and those they\u2019re trying to help. And they say it has lost police reports about alleged crimes, sometimes as officers were in the midst of writing them.\u00a0
Spillman Technologies, which was\u2002acquired by Motorola Solutions in 2016, provides dispatch and records management software systems to more than 1,000 agencies nationwide, according to\u2002a 2016 press release\u00a0from Motorola. Officials say that while those services are crucial for law enforcement agencies, the software has failed to deliver them as promised.
Eleven spokespeople for Motorola Solutions did not respond to phone calls and emails from NBC News containing a dozen detailed questions summarizing the allegations in this story.\u00a0
A lost allegation of child sex abuse
Sgt. Rob Garnero, a spokesperson for the Redding, California police department, last month blamed Spillman for losing a 2018 allegation that Ryan Rovito, 34, had \u201cseveral hundred\u201d child sex abuse images on his computer, which authorities discovered after his ex-wife reported finding \u201csome photos of prepubescent juveniles on his computer,\u201d Garnero said. How exactly the case got lost within the software, though, remains unclear.\u00a0
But Redding Police Chief Bill Schueller said that it was unclear whether Rovito\u2019s initial case was lost due to a problem with Spillman \u2014 which he said the department had just started using a few weeks before the case was filed \u2014 or a mistake made by a staff member who was \u201clearning the new system and making a mistake in the routing of the reports.\u201d He said a lieutenant doing an audit of other lost cases has found \u201ca couple hundred,\u201d but \u201cnone of any significant impact\u201d like the Rovito case.
Lieutenant Chris Smyrnos of the Redding Police, who said he oversaw the implementation of Spillman throughout Shasta County, said that Rovito\u2019s 2018 case was likely lost due to an \u201coperator error where that report got misrouted\u201d to a part of the software that was not being actively monitored by those who had access to it \u2014\u00a0something he said the software should not allow to happen in the first place.
Because it was lost,\u00a0the case was never prosecuted and didn\u2019t reach the Shasta County District Attorney\u2019s Office until last November, after officials initially believed the statute of limitations had expired, representatives for the DA\u2019s office and the Redding Police Department have said.
It was only after Rovito\u2019s current wife gave police his hard drive and a hidden camera she allegedly found in the couple\u2019s bathroom that authorities from the DA\u2019s office determined that the 2018 case actually fell under a 10-year limit and that law enforcement would investigate it alongside the more recent case. Rovito was\u2002arrested last month\u00a0on charges related to possession of child sex abuse images and surreptitious recording.
Regardless of how the case was lost, Schueller said it was \u201cvery frustrating\u201d that Rovito\u2019s earlier case was lost until a few months ago \u2014 and that it\u2019s far from his only frustration with Spillman.
Rovito\u2019s lawyer, Timothy Prentiss, has said his client maintains his innocence. His next court date is April 21.
System crashes during 911 calls create \u2018huge safety risks’
Spillman has a track record of failing to properly maintain multiple types of records for the Redding police, including crime data, Schueller alleged. As a result, the\u2002crime statistics\u00a0available on their website from 2019 to 2021 are \u201ca rough estimate,\u201d he said.\u00a0
\u201cWe didn\u2019t do it for 2022 because it\u2019s too screwed up,\u201d he added.
The software has also failed to track how long it takes individual agencies to respond to the scene of an emergency, according to Schueller and Smyrnos, who said they can only see how long it takes the first agency to arrive. (If that first agency is the fire department, for example, the police department can\u2019t see how long it took their officers to arrive, Smyrnos said.)
As a result, Schueller has hired three high school interns to try to make those calculations manually so he \u201ccan get accurate response time data\u201d for his officers, he said.\u00a0
The software would also crash when officers were in the middle of writing police reports, Smyrnos said, adding that sometimes officers would lose narratives they had been writing for two to three hours, forcing them to start again.
And Schueller alleged Spillman has created \u201chuge safety risks\u201d for both first responders and civilians by repeatedly crashing while dispatchers were trying to enter details from 911 calls, which are needed to send first responders to the scene.\u00a0
When the system crashes, call takers \u201chandwrite notes on a piece of paper while the system reboots and continue to try to help the caller and get the units \u2014 whatever they are, fire, police or ambulance resources \u2014 to that person,\u201d he said.\u00a0
\u201cA crash while you\u2019re entering in an emergency call is not an effective way to serve our community,\u201d he added.\u00a0
Schueller said that officers in his department constantly reported problems with the software to the company \u2014 and \u201csome things would get fixed, some things would never get fixed,\u201d he said.
The software also repeatedly crashed during 911 calls\u00a0in Weld County, Colorado, where more than 40 agencies used Spillman from approximately early 2012 until last November, according to one former and one current county official.\u00a0
The system would freeze in the midst of 911 calls \u201clike somebody unplugged it,\u201d and call takers would then have to take handwritten notes and deliver them to a dispatcher charged with sending first responders to the scene, said Mike Wallace, the county\u2019s former director of public safety communications.
\u201cIt was such a regular event with Spillman \u2014 the system was crashing on a weekly basis \u2014 that we had to educate and train our staff to manually intervene,\u201d said Wallace, who is now the public safety communications manager for the city of Margate, Florida, which he said does not use the Spillman software.\u00a0
A $1.25 million dollar settlement\u00a0
Wallace said that while he could not recall any instance in which a civilian in Weld County died as a result of Spillman\u2019s delays, officials knew the crashes were costing dispatchers and first responders time they couldn\u2019t afford to lose.
\u201cBetween life and death, seconds mean everything,\u201d he said.
Lost time due to a software error made a fatal difference in San Angelo, Texas, according to a more than $3.5 million lawsuit the city brought against Spillman Technologies in 2017.\u00a0
The suit \u2014 which Spillman paid $1.25 million to settle that same year, and which was dismissed with prejudice,\u00a0meaning\u00a0it cannot be refiled \u2014 alleged Spillman was \u201ca defective software solution\u201d that \u201cjeopardized the lives of the city\u2019s residents and first responders.\u201d It alleged that Spillman routinely crashed and failed to properly map the shortest routes to the scene of an emergency, causing first responders to rely on maps on their personal cellphones and forcing city residents to sometimes wait up to 30 minutes for first responders to arrive.\u00a0
In one instance, a local resident who was suffering from cardiac arrest died, allegedly while waiting for first responders to arrive after the Spillman software allegedly malfunctioned and dispatched a unit of first responders located on the opposite side of the city, 25\u00a0 to 30 minutes from the scene, according to the lawsuit. A closer group of first responders eventually learned about the emergency call and beat the other unit to the scene \u2014 but by that time, it was already too late, according to the lawsuit, which said the death was \u201ca preventable outcome for the patient.\u201d\u00a0
In another incident, Spillman allegedly failed to alert dispatchers that multiple calls were coming from the same address: one caller \u2014 an armed man \u2014 said he planned to kill police and that neighboring homes should be evacuated, and another caller reported a house fire at the scene, the lawsuit states. As a result, police who arrived at the scene \u201cwere surprised to find the house on fire,\u201d and firefighters were not prepared to encounter the man armed with a rifle in the home\u2019s front yard, the lawsuit alleges, adding that firefighters \u201ccrawled to the back of their engine to take cover.\u201d\u00a0
Lorelei Day, deputy communications director for the city of San Angelo, said officials do not have any further comment on the settlement and that the city is now using software manufactured by a different company.\u00a0
Former Spillman customers go elsewhere
Other onetime Spillman customers have also abandoned the software for what they say are more effective alternatives.
Weld County replaced Spillman last year with CentralSquare,\u00a0a software system the company\u00a0says\u00a0is used by more than 8,000 public agencies, \u201cdue to the growth of our county and the increased functionality associated with CentralSquare,\u201d said Tina Powell, director of public safety communications.
Shasta County will no longer be a Spillman customer as of May 1, when they will switch to Motorola\u2019s PremierOne dispatch and records management software, which Schueller characterized as \u201ctried and true\u201d in large law enforcement agencies throughout the country.\u00a0
\u201cIt\u2019s been a frustrating transition to Spillman \u2014 I\u2019m frankly glad we\u2019re getting out of it,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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