Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Philly- Cause of police radio system's failure still unclear

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 13:52:26 -0400

Posted on Fri, May. 21, 2004

Cause of police radio system's failure still unclear

By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr.

Inquirer Staff Writer

The glitch in the police radio system that left a large
number of the city's 600 patrol officers on duty
Tuesday night without two-way communications for
roughly a half-hour remained elusive yesterday as
technicians searched to isolate the cause.

"Our main concern is that we resolve the issue and
[preserve] the safety of the officers and the public
they protect," said Steve Gorecki, a spokesman for
Motorola, the company that installed the city's new
$52 million emergency-services digital communication
system that went online about 18 months ago.

Two-way communications were back to normal yesterday as the probe was
conducted. Gorecki said a technician would remain at Police Headquarters
at least until tonight in case another problem occurs.

He said the company was working closely with city officials to remedy
the problem "so it doesn't happen again."
The breakdown 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 quell a fight on the highway.
The call for assistance went out three times, sparking a major response.

The Fraternal Order of Police president, Robert Ellis, angrily
criticized the breakdown at a news conference Wednesday, saying it was
lucky an officer or someone else was not hurt during the blackout, the
second such failure to hit the Philadelphia police radio system in
recent months.

Deputy Police Commissioner Charles Brennan, head of the department's
Science and Technology section, said the breakdown began around 9:05
p.m. Though service was pretty much restored before 10 p.m., sporadic
problems continued until near midnight, he said.

Brennan said technicians believe the problem was tied to the radio room
in Police Headquarters, where dispatchers tried to put the system in a
mode that could communicate with all officers, citywide, at the same
time because of the triple "assist officer" emergency. Officers normally
communicate with the police radio room on channels specifically assigned
to the division or unit in which they work.

"The dispatchers did their jobs. They gave the system valid commands,"
Brennan said yesterday in an interview at headquarters. "Those valid
commands never should have caused the system to malfunction."

Meanwhile, in the event of another radio failure, officers on the street
have been given orders to proceed immediately to their district
headquarters. From there, they will be deployed in pairs in patrol cars
equipped with mobile data terminals linking the unit via computer to
headquarters.

New procedures also are under way in the sprawling radio room on the
second floor of headquarters in the event of trouble. "We've issued some
procedures in radio that we believe will mitigate the problem and
prevent it from happening again," Brennan said.

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

Copyright phillynews

 http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/8717641.htm

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