Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Phila. police radio outage angers FOP president

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 14:31:16 -0400

Posted on Thu, May. 20, 2004

Phila. police radio outage angers FOP president

By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr.

Inquirer Staff Writer

The city's relatively new $52 million police radio system went off the
air for 20 to 40 minutes Tuesday night, leaving a night shift of about
600 patrol officers without its electronic lifeline to headquarters, FOP
officials charged yesterday.

The failure came as waves of officers from all over the city were
responding to repeated calls for help from police on Wade Street in
Germantown, where an officer was trying to break up a fight on the
highway. The call for assistance went out three times.

The breakdown angered the normally reserved Fraternal Order of Police
president, Robert Eddis. At a news conference at FOP headquarters, Eddis
said it was good fortune that an officer or someone else who needed help
wasn't hurt during the period.

Later, Deputy Police Commissioner Charles Brennan, head of the
department's Science and Technology section, confirmed the breakdown,
which he said began around 9:05 p.m. He attributed the crash to the
influx of police cars from across the city that were dispatched to the
Germantown case.

"In order to talk to all the officers in the entire city, police radio
uses a command in the radio system which... permits us to talk to all
the officers on the street at the same time," said Brennan, who
disagreed with the FOP's allegation that all frequencies went down.

But invoking that command led to a series of glitches that forced the
system into backup, causing more than half the frequencies to crash,
Brennan said.

Thus, he said, dispatchers "couldn't get out to the people on the
street, and the people on the street couldn't talk to the radio
consoles," or dispatchers. "We still don't know why this happened."

After the blackout, there were sporadic problems with the radio system
for two hours, Eddis said.

Eddis said he was aggravated that the police brass did not yet know the
root cause of the problem or a similar instance about two months ago. On
each occasion, he said, no viable backup system was in place.

"Our worst nightmare was experienced last night," said Eddis, who
previously had limited his criticism of the administration of Police
Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson. "There was a time that the radio went
completely dead."

The problem with the city's radio system occurred the same day that the
independent Sept. 11 commission released findings of emergency radio
system failures in New York during the World Trade Center attacks.

Eddis said he was encouraged that officials approved a contingency plan,
touted by the FOP, during a meeting yesterday with the brass.

Yesterday afternoon, a teletypewriter message went out to all hands
stating that in the event of a radio system failure, officers were to
proceed to their district headquarters.

"District supervisors will assign personnel only to two-person" vehicles
with working mobile data terminals linking officers via computer to
headquarters and other police computers, the message said.

But Eddis said: "The question we're asking today is whether there is any
guarantee that what happened last night won't happen again today, and
the answer was no. They have not been able to identify yet what the
problem is."

The blackouts come in the wake of a problem with the Motorola
800-megahertz digital trunked system, which went online here in December
2002. The new system uses portable radio sets that had problems with the
recharging of the batteries. Supplies of new batteries, expected by the
department at the end of the summer, will be available in the next week
or so, Eddis said.

Eddis yesterday questioned why the problem was not corrected during the
first breakdown, two months ago. He said he was fearful for the safety
of officers operating without an effective radio communication system.

Brennan said that in both failures, the problem was traced to the radio
command that permits dispatchers to talk to police citywide.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact staff writer Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. at 215-854-2642 or
[email-masked]

Copyright phillynews

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/8709949.htm?1c

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

-- 
    "NEXTEL-1 IT'S NOT JUST NEXTEL"
  Note The New address 
Subscribe to Nextel-1: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL-1

  "NEXTEL2 FOR iDEN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS"
Subscribe to Nextel2: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL2

  "WIRELESS FORUM HOMELAND SECURITY GROUP"
     The Complete Resource for Wireless Homeland Security.
Subscribe to WFHSG:  http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/WFHSG

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEXTEL-1/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     [email-masked]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/