Metro Net

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dw2872

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I saw (on the http://forums.radioreference.com/colorado-radio-discussion-forum/276470-westminster-p25.html thread) where Nate said he had not seen Metro Net on any of the local EDACS systems.

Notably a few months ago MetroNet disappeared from all the EDACS systems, EXCEPT it is still present on DIA EDACS (where it is used the least). Moreover, MetroNet also just recently appeared on the Lakewood-et al. P-25 system as a new TG.

-Nate

The last time I've seen Metro Net on the Aurora EDACS was July 30th, 2013 and before then it was very active every day and all day/night on that system.

I can tell by listening to the archives of Metro Net (from a little over a year before that) the importance of Metro Net, especially for Aurora when they used it very well during/after the Aurora Theater shooting for coordination with and requests for resources from:

Denver
State Patrol
Arapahoe County
Adams County
Jefferson County
Douglas County
Thornton
Englewood
Littleton
Bloomfield
Castle Rock
Commerce City
Parker
Golden
South Metro Fire
Westminster (although Westy came over Metro Net over an hour later and apologized for not hearing their call for help from all metro agencies an hour before)

Listening to Metro Net that day, it was a huge victory for interoperability (except for Westminster).

Of course many units on scene switched over to BLUE SE when Denver PD came over Metro Net to suggest moving on scene ops over there, from all the different local agency TGs, since so many outside agency officers were on scene, but the interoperabilty between agency dispatchers was phenomenal.

Quite possibly, Aurora could have just stopped patching it into the rest of their system for use by just any user (PD and FD units) and just limited it to use by console/dispatch by having it stand alone DTRS in the dispatch center and separating it from the EDACS network altogether. This may have been what happened on Aurora EDACS at the end of July.
 
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Steve2003

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Another good place hear MetroNet is on the Lakewood P25 system. I have also seen RTD Security (DTRS TGID 10096) show up on this system as well.
 

greenthumb

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They probably just took it off of the air and it still goes to their wireline consoles. By policy, no radios should have metro net in them except for dispatch backup/disaster recovery radios or radios for dispatch centers that don't have wireline consoles (this is why you see metro net on certain DTRS sites). It is intended for dispatch-to-dispatch communications only, so it really has no use in user radios and very limited need to go over the air.
 

Scan-Denver

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They probably just took it off of the air and it still goes to their wireline consoles. By policy, no radios should have metro net in them except for dispatch backup/disaster recovery radios or radios for dispatch centers that don't have wireline consoles (this is why you see metro net on certain DTRS sites). It is intended for dispatch-to-dispatch communications only, so it really has no use in user radios and very limited need to go over the air.
Interesting! Our handheld (DPD) radios still have the Network First talkgroups programmed in, that being said I'm sure the mobile units have it also.
 

greenthumb

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My explanation is only for the metro net talk group and isn't relevant to the rest of the Network First "color" talk groups.
 
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natedawg1604

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UPDATE: Approx. 2 days ago MetroNet "re-appeared" on the Arvada EDACS system, it seems be configured the same as before (i.e. "Permanently active", regardless of which agency is using it). As far as I can tell, no other EDACS system re-added it. Furthermore, it appears DIA may have removed it from their EDACS system.
 

dw2872

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They probably just took it off of the air and it still goes to their wireline consoles. By policy, no radios should have metro net in them except for dispatch backup/disaster recovery radios or radios for dispatch centers that don't have wireline consoles (this is why you see metro net on certain DTRS sites). It is intended for dispatch-to-dispatch communications only, so it really has no use in user radios and very limited need to go over the air.

Did I hear correctly that MetroNet was patched for the Thornton PD pursuit and officer involved shooting that Denver PD was involved with just after midnight last night (early this morning)?
 

jimmnn

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Did I hear correctly that MetroNet was patched for the Thornton PD pursuit and officer involved shooting that Denver PD was involved with just after midnight last night (early this morning)?

Yes Air 1 was on it calling the pursuit.

Jim<
 

greenthumb

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Did Denver patch the air support TG to metro net?

Policies state that this is not how metro net is supposed to be used, but at the end of the day, it's up to the dispatchers and users in the field how things end up being used.
 

jimmnn

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No all units operating the pursuit including Air 1 were told to switch to Metronet.

Pretty good archives, you should listen.

Jim<
 

rfburns

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[Did Denver patch the air support TG to metro net?]

DPD patched everything to Metro Net. Districts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 including Air 1 which I suppose was on Dist. 1, but could have been on Air Support. Radio traffic wasn't bad with just TPD Dispatch, Air One and Dist 1, but when Dist 4 was added to the patch which I think was on the 2nd trip down SB I-25 there was too much unnecessary talking taking up air time.

Probably the correct thing would have been for Thornton PD to move from Metro Net to Blue NE or a MAC and then DPD could have patched to that.

Denver authorized a maximum of six cars to the pursuit.

Do patching tactics ever get included in AAR's?

I believe it was a patch because of the delay time coming out on Metro Net, but Jim could be right that the cars went directly to MetroNet. Do DPD cars have Metro Net? I thought Metro Net was suppose to be just console to console. I haven't gone back to the archives-just going from by memory.
 
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jimmnn

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[Did Denver patch the air support TG to metro net?]

DPD patched everything to Metro Net. Districts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 including Air 1 which I suppose was on Dist. 1, but could have been on Air Support. Radio traffic wasn't bad with just TPD Dispatch, Air One and Dist 1, but when Dist 4 was added to the patch which I think was on the 2nd trip down SB I-25 there was too much unnecessary talking taking up air time.

Probably the correct thing would have been for Thornton PD to move from Metro Net to Blue NE or a MAC and then DPD could have patched to that.

Denver authorized a maximum of six cars to the pursuit.

Do patching tactics ever get included in AAR's?

I believe it was a patch because of the delay time coming out on Metro Net, but Jim could be right that the cars went directly to MetroNet. Do DPD cars have Metro Net? I thought Metro Net was suppose to be just console to console. I haven't gone back to the archives-just going from by memory.

I don't think the DPD cars have Metronet but I think the helicopter does because his audio quality was much different.

Jim<
 

dw2872

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I just checked the details on the patches for that Thornton incident...

DPD Air-1 came up on DPD D1 Dispatch at 11:41 pm.

Denver did in-fact patch MetroNet with DPD D1 at 11:46 pm (using Denver SAID patch TG-1798). This is when you could hear all the DPD D1 officers over MetroNet.

About 5 minutes later, (at 11:52 pm) DPD 150B (Sgt) asked the Denver dispatcher to patch D1 with D4 and D3. She accomplished a patch quickly with MetroNet, D1, D4, and D3 using SAID TG-1799.

Within a few seconds she also dropped that patch and patched in D6 as well (all included were MetroNet, D1, D3, D4, and D6) using SAID TG-1800. The dispatcher did not announce that D6 is also patched at that time though.

At midnight the Denver patch switched to SAID-1801 but I don't know if anything was changed as far as the district channels that were patched.

At 12:13 am, DPD Air-1's job was finished and headed back to the airport to put the video on disk and that is when dispatch un-patched MetroNet but left 1, 3, 4, and 6 patched.

At 12:14 am, DPD 1400 (Lt) asked if the patches were still up and she said 1, 2 , 4, and 6 were still up. However, the patches say D3 was also patched (I didn't see 2 patched but that may have been the patch that got added at midnight and it was missed in the data). I am pretty sure she just mistakenly said 2 instead of 3 or else she just mistakenly left out the fact that 3 was also patched. I can't really tell because some of the patch info on the EDACS side was getting missed in the data collection.

At 12:16 am Denver dispatch began dropping patches and the SAID patch cycled to 1804, at 12:17 to 1805, and 12:18 to 1806, 12:20 to 1538, and then by 12:25 all patches had been dropped.

Hopefully Steve B. still has his EDACS and P25 collection up and running and in that case he has a much clearer picture of what went on with all the patches.
 
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