FUTURE CRIMEFIGHTERS HAVE TECH ON THEIR SIDE TECHNOLOGY TO ALTER CRIMEFIGHTING.

Byline: Orith Goldberg Staff Writer

LANCASTER - A gunshot is fired. Within seconds, prepositioned acoustic sensors within a square-mile area send a message to the Los Angeles County sheriff's Century Station, where the source of the gunfire is plotted on a digital map.

Soon after, phone calls go out to residents alerting them of the gunfire and allowing them to provide information via the buttons on their telephones.

The automated messages, in English or Spanish, give sheriff's investigators information while protecting witnesses from retaliation.

``No one will know who was contacted except the police,'' said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Sid Heal.

Welcome to the 2000s, where crimefighting tools will advance more in a few years than in the past two centuries.

The shotspotter, which will be used in a pilot project in a secret South Central Los Angeles area for the next six months, is one of many technological advances that will reshape crimefighting in the 21st century.

Also in the future, the Sheriff's Department will have access to devices that stimulate the nerves with an electrical impulse, providing a nonlethal method of stopping criminals.

Officials also will be able to place a device on suspects to determine whether they are armed. The device will discriminate between firearms, cell phones, keys and pagers, Heal said.

''In many cases, the suspect won't know he's been searched,'' Heal said.

Heal said investigators will have tools that will take them back to the crime, in effect. Infrared devices will allow them pick up evidence that tells them who was present at the scene of a crime.

In car crashes, infrared light can be used to tell where cars were at a given time, he said.

Downsizing of the Defense Department and changes brought about at the end of the Cold War have prompted federal laboratories, defense contractors, manufacturers and vendors to seek other markets among police agencies for their Dick Tracy-style wares, officials said.

Computer technology already exists that will make it easier for cops to do desk work, officials say. Detectives will be able to access information from department files much more quickly with desktop computers. Connections with other agencies, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, will allow investigators to plug in a suspect's name and have instant access to his record and photographs.

Sgt. Darrel Brown at the Lancaster sheriff's station said computers not only have added to efficiency but significantly cut the time it takes to gather information on suspects.

Computers have helped detectives map out areas targeted for crime, highlighted patterns and predicted trends, Brown said.

``Before, you had to do hand tracking of criminals and cases. . . . Now you plug the information into the computer, and it tells you about this criminal and his crimes,'' Brown said.

Perhaps the biggest advancement in recent years and one that is being fined tuned is instant identification through fingerprints. Investigators can fax laser photographs of fingerprints to a central database in Sacramento and receive an immediate identification.

The process used be done by the naked eye and could take weeks.

County jails, including the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, will enjoy increased efficiency brought on by technology.

Bar coding is being considered to keep track of inmates at the four jails at Pitchess, said Bud DeVusser, operations deputy for the four facilities.

The 8,400 to 8,600 inmates at Pitchess would wear bar-codes on bracelets that would be scanned as inmates move among the jails and through the court system. When inmates have visitors, their passes would be printed with the bar code identification, DeVusser said.

In about six months, the maximum-security North County Correctional Facility at Pitchess may be the site of a new video visitation pilot project. Inmates would speak with visitors through a television monitor and phone line to increase visiting hours without upping staff time.

``In 1999, we had 251,000 visitors,'' DeVusser said. ``You are talking about a lot of visitors. Is it feasible to do video conferencing? We'd like to find out.''

Although the costs of such a system have yet to be calculated, DeVusser said it would be possible for the county to recoup the money, saving on transporting inmates from jails to visiting centers and reducing staff hours.

Other advances, perhaps heightened by the O.J. Simpson trial, have been made in DNA analysis.

Because analysis is now relying less on restriction fragment length polymorphism in favor of the simpler polymerase chain reaction, analysts will need less DNA to perform testing.

Through PCR, cells are duplicated. Theoretically, a billion copies can be made with one piece of DNA. While RFLP requires bigger samples of DNA, PCR applications require minute amounts, sheriff's senior criminalist Steve R. Renteria said.

``Thank God for DNA and PCR,'' Renteria said. ``We're now saying that evidence didn't come from this person or that. It's more exciting when we're able to exclude someone (as a suspect).''

When a sample of blood, hair or skin is deposited into the environment, the matter is immediately exposed to air, sunlight and dirt, factors that contribute to the degradation of the DNA. In some cases, when DNA pieces are cut up, RFLP can be ineffective.

Renteria estimated that law enforcement agencies are five to seven years away from taking miniaturized machines to the scene of a homicide, conveying the information through a secured modem and connecting with a DNA indexing system.