Maine sheriff's deputy goes off on ME state police

[Stephanie B]

A bureaucracy that may care more about protecting its turf/rice bowl over getting something done. Yeah, like that hasn't happened.

I keep hearing about the issue of radio connectivity, but how many units can be on the same frequency before it breaks down in chaos? How does that get managed so that searches can be done in different areas without everyone hearing data that's not relevant to them? Who tells the units searching, say, the south county area "you guys go to button five" and ensures that what they find goes up to the powers that be and what they need to know gets to them?

That doesn't sound like something that can be stood up and to make work on the fly, but then how do they make time to practice setting up and running a black swan event?

Also, Lewiston may be to the south, but if you haven't flown over Maine or lived there, you may not appreciate how huge and sparsely-settled much of it is. My memory is that the Halifax Sectional had areas in far-northern Maine where a single cabin was deemed useful as an aeronautical landmark.

[Screwball]

I keep hearing about the issue of radio connectivity, but how many units can be on the same frequency before it breaks down in chaos? How does that get managed so that searches can be done in different areas without everyone hearing data that's not relevant to them? Who tells the units searching, say, the south county area "you guys go to button five" and ensures that what they find goes up to the powers that be and what they need to know gets to them?

That doesn't sound like something that can be stood up and to make work on the fly, but then how do they make time to practice setting up and running a black swan event?

Can’t speak for other agencies, but our radios are supposed to be pulled and replaced… airports and seaports take precedence over the land border.

That being said, my port runs on one channel. We have times where there are operations running where people in that should be running on another channel to not clog communications. Like me waiting to hear a trucker is coming over for an I-94 shouldn’t be listening to “load of French fries… clear to release” all night. But people don’t do it for the laziness.

For being able to hear the people on that second channel, one person… usually the supervisor… turns on scan. Same used for other agency frequencies. There is a time/place that I’ll put up listening to the domestic and traffic calls all shift. 10/25 thru 10/27 was that time/place.

A bigger problem we have is related to encryption. Nothing we do requires us to be on secure, and I make sure other officers are not on that. Reason being, I don’t want someone getting their ass beaten to death calling over the radio, and we can’t hear because he is on secure. If we need to be on secure… someone above me can put it over the radio and done.

[TGS]

A bureaucracy that may care more about protecting its turf/rice bowl over getting something done. Yeah, like that hasn't happened.

I keep hearing about the issue of radio connectivity, but how many units can be on the same frequency before it breaks down in chaos? How does that get managed so that searches can be done in different areas without everyone hearing data that's not relevant to them? Who tells the units searching, say, the south county area "you guys go to button five" and ensures that what they find goes up to the powers that be and what they need to know gets to them?

That doesn't sound like something that can be stood up and to make work on the fly, but then how do they make time to practice setting up and running a black swan event?

Also, Lewiston may be to the south, but if you haven't flown over Maine or lived there, you may not appreciate how huge and sparsely-settled much of it is. My memory is that the Halifax Sectional had areas in far-northern Maine where a single cabin was deemed useful as an aeronautical landmark.

There's digital communications management programs that allow the communications center to break users out into private channels without the user having to do anything. Lacking that equipment, there's usually several radio channels referred to as "Tac Channels" for a given communications net which are for exactly what you're proposing, and a given element commander (say, a sergeant) or even dispatcher will order specific units to roll to Tac-whatever which will then be reserved for their exclusive use, while the element commander maintains the comms with other element commanders and the overall incident command. It's pretty routine, we used to do it all the time at my last job and its nothing new. We were on a county wide dispatch that most (but not all) of the county participated in, and there were numerous tac channels to roll to for a specific scene's operations.

The problem comes with agencies not wanting to use a common communication center and channels. Rice bowl, fiefdom, all that. It's common that agencies operating on different nets will at least have one shared channel, but that's usually more purposed for big picture incident command use.

[Wondering Beard]

A bureaucracy that may care more about protecting its turf/rice bowl over getting something done. Yeah, like that hasn't happened.

It is inherent to bureaucracies to do so.

The incentives to do otherwise are few and far between ... at best.

[jnc36rcpd]

My former department has its own communications center. In the 1970's, an agreement was reached that city officers and county officers could run each other's calls. For many years, we were expected to monitor two radio channels. City officers had more motivation and the technology (scanners) to do so that most county officers. We were known as the "Code 3 police" as many officers would only run the calls that sounded fun and exciting. I'll note most citizens called 911 rather than a seven and now ten digit city number (other than frequent callers).

It was a tremendous improvement when the county channel became our primary channel. The city's communications section does data checks and call-taking much as county call-takers do, entering the CFS into CAD just as the county does. Communication became much smoother. An additional benefit occurred when the city became primary for calls which resulted in some of the ROAD (retired on active duty) officers to seek employment in the civilian world.

The technology has improved .Our radios can communicate on police and fire-rescue channels throughout the national capital region. The problem remains that many officers don't understand the full capabilities of their radios. Things generally go smoothly. Officers switch channels as needed and move to tactical frequencies as needed. The potential problem is when things go beyond every shift emergency to regional catastrophe when communication needs to occur among disparate units that don't usually work together. I understand that there are "talk groups", but have no idea how to establish one or their exact purpose. I don't think this is entirely because I'm an over-the-hill luddite. I'd venture many of the tech-savvy younger cops could communicate with the moon on their cell phones, but couldn't move to an inter-department talk group.

I did suggest that in-service t raining cover the capabilities of the radio system. I guess something politically correct was more important for IST that year. The radio "training" was a memorandum that basically said: "We have radios. They have multiple channels."

[KevH]

It's been my experience that this has solved LOTS of the problems discussed here:

https://www.ebrcsa.org/

After Loma Prieta (1989) and the Oakland Hills Firestorm (1991) where first responders died because they couldn't communicate, the SF East Bay (thousands of cops and firefighters in dozens of departments) went to one joint radio shop for the entire East Bay funded as a group (although Oakland PD...where the problem started...is still struggling to play along).

During any type of multi agency incident (big fire, pursuit, shooting, active shooter, search for bad guy, etc.) channels get "patched" (combined) by dispatch. The cops don't have to switch anything so there is no need to train them or have them look down at radios. It's simply a sergeant or other supervisor...hell, even a cop or firefighter on the call...saying "patch channels" and two, three, or four department's primary channels get patched so we are all talking to one another. A dispatched just clicks a mouse on a computer screen. Then ICS is used for command. The channels get "un-patched" when the event winds down or concludes.

I hate to sound like roses and sunshine, but this system actually works really really well and solves most of the problems discussed in this thread.

[Erick Gelhaus]

... (although Oakland PD...where the problem started...is still struggling to play along).

My old org has a propellor head portion of a larger special operations unit, that does communications, video, inner perimeter & CP tech stuff. One of the assets is a Sat Comm truck that can patch almost anyone to almost anyone else in the public safety realm. We took that to so many Oakland riots, er, I mean mostly peaceful protests so OPD could talk to others.