J.P. Ellery, Correspondent, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (Massachusetts)
For decades, police and firefighters in area towns have lived with radio communication inadequacies.
Some of those irritating problems will be resolved with the award of a $167,899 federal grant recently announced by the Central Region Homeland Security Advisory Council in Worcester.
The grant will enable seven local police departments to enhance radio communications with local public safety departments by purchasing 30 portable two-way digital radios. Each town will get four units and the state police dispatch center in New Braintree will receive two radios to retain for use by the other towns in case of a major regional emergency. ?
Cpl. Kevin M. Landine, a veteran of the Hardwick Police Department, came up with the idea to apply for the grant, which
will benefit police departments in Brookfield, East Brookfield, Hardwick, New Braintree, North Brookfield, Petersham and West Brookfield.
In a news release, Edward McNamara, chairman of the advisory council, said he was grateful to New Braintree Police Chief Bert DuVernay, Petersham Police Chief Dana Cooley and Cpl. Landine for their efforts in securing this grant.
Cpl. Landine said he was tipped off by a radio serviceman who maintains radios for his department that the new digital radios were coming out and that they would significantly help out local towns.
The immediate problem is that area police and fire departments are on different frequencies, making it tough to communicate.
?The Fire Department can talk with us, but they have to carry two radios or we have to carry two,? Cpl. Landine said.
He said the new Motorola APX 7000 digital portable radios will eliminate that nuisance.
West Brookfield Police Chief C. Thomas O?Donnell said these units will make a big difference in his town and
surrounding communities.
?They?re dual-use radios,? he said. ?They have not only the 800 megahertz (frequencies), which all the police departments have, but they also have the high band that all the fire departments are on; so in one radio, you have access to all of those frequencies.? He said that has never been the case before.
Cpl. Landine said this solves a serious glitch in his town. The new portables will enable the Hardwick Department, for example, to talk with neighboring Ware police on the portables.
?Currently we have mobile radios in our cars that can talk to Ware, but if we get out on a scene with them we can?t talk with them,? he said.
?It helps inter-operability beyond the scope of anything,? the corporal said. ?It?s huge. That?s why I?d love to get more of these radios for each town. They?re going benefit us with officer safety beyond belief.?
He said he originally asked for 15 radios for each town in the grant request, but the agency could not fund that. Each radio is worth nearly $6,000.
He said that over the years there have been many instances in area towns in which cruisers from nearby communities, either traveling toward each other or jointly responding to an emergency, were unable to communicate with each other. They had to relay messages through a dispatch facility capable of contacting each department.
Cpl. Landine wondered aloud why there isn?t a statewide system to predetermine the best regional frequencies that multiple neighboring towns could use and requiring public safety departments in those towns to purchase the applicable radios.
He said that despite these new portable radios, Hardwick will not be able to communicate with neighboring Barre, because that town recently bought radios using a different frequency.
?They went to 400 (megahertz.) That?s a whole other separate radio that we can?t even talk to them on now. That?s the problem with this,? he said, noting that ?everyone ? has their own system.?
He said a lot of the towns in the immediate area are fortunate to have a regional dispatch center provided by state police, which does provide an alternative way of communicating with other departments.
There also is a regional frequency for Worcester County that enables Hardwick to contact Barre though the Rutland dispatch center, but the whole system makes for an array of arrangements for police officers, especially new ones, to have to remember.
At the time of this interview, Chief O?Donnell of the West Brookfield department was still waiting for delivery of the four radios for his town.
?The radios have been purchased,? he said. ?They?re in. They are just waiting to get programmed.?
?It?s an excellent idea and a good use of the (grant) money,? Chief O?Donnell said.?
Copyright ? 2013 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.?
Source: http://psc.apcointl.org/2013/02/26/channeling-the-same-frequencies-police-get-168k-grant-for-radios/
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