Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Pa.- Hearing yields little on why police radio keeps crashing

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 16:25:22 -0400

Posted on Thu, Jul. 15, 2004

Hearing yields little on why police radio keeps crashing

FOP prez: Defects put cops at risk
By CATHERINE LUCEY

[email-masked]

Officials still don't know all the reasons why the
city's $54 million police radio system has suffered at
least three breakdowns in the past few months,
according to testimony at a City Council hearing
yesterday.

And as long as the problems go unsolved, officers'
lives are in danger, the police union head said.

"My fear is that one of our officers is going to get killed out there
and it could have [been prevented]," said Robert Eddis, president of the
Fraternal Order of Police.

Eddis, along with top police brass and officials from Motorola, who
designed the system, all attended the hearing yesterday to discuss the
problems.

"We're concerned for the safety of the people out there and we want to
see this fixed," said Deputy Commissioner Charles Brennan, head of the
department's Science and Technology section.

Brennan and Motorola Regional Vice President of Sales John McFadden said
that they are committed to solving the system problems.

The Motorola digital system went online here in December 2002. There
have been three radio breakdowns in recent months, police said.

The first was on March 25th when an officer called for a "triple
assist," which means an officer is in a dangerous situation and needs
backup.

A dispatcher used a radio function that lets them talk to all the radio
channels at once.

This caused the system to "lock down," and for about three minutes,
officers on the street couldn't contact dispatchers.
Motorola said they think they have fixed the problem with that function,
but police have yet to test it.

The second problem came on May 18, also during a "triple assist." This
time, a dispatcher used a different tool to try and contact multiple
divisions at once.

This caused about half of the radio channels to shut down for a period
of several hours.
Most recently, the system experienced coverage problems throughout the
past weekend, Brennan said.
But he noted that it never grew serious enough to go to a backup system.

Motorola did not provide reasons for the two recent failures.

Eddis said he has received numerous complaints from officers about the
new system.
"These problems have existed for a long time," he said.

He said that one sergeant told him "this police radio system is the
worst change the department has made in my 23 years of service."

McFadden said Motorola is working to fix the problems, but one of the
difficulties in pinpointing the trouble
spots is that they're dealing with a system that is used 24 hours a day.

So Motorola has built a duplicate of the Philadelphia system, which they
are testing to see if they can solve the problems.
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/9157467.htm?1c

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