Orange County Police Frequencies

I have a few questions that don't make sense to me in regards to how Orange County handles police dispatch.

I'm guessing that (159.13500) Police 911 Priority is for priority 911 calls. I hear back and forth from dispatcher to officer.

What is (155.85000) Police Mobile Radio District (MRD) for? I hear back and forth too.

Does a local cop monitor his own town dispatcher or Troop dispatcher if he's State Police, 911 Priority, and Mobile Radio District? This doesn't make sense to me. Do they just monitor their local frequency and change to the others when needed? Does the Dispatcher tell him to change? Does his radio receive all 3 frequencies at the same time for monitoring?

In a nutshell

911 Priority (159.135 and the associated 800 TG) is the channel where priority 911 calls are dispatched via AVL to the closest available units (except in Middletown, Newburgh City and Port Jervis). Pretty much all LE in Orange County monitor this frequency including SP, Sheriffs, EnCon, State Parks and possibly some Feds

MRD (155.850 ) is the local dispatch channel that is monitored by 911 for departments that don't have their own dispatch or when the towns dispatchers are off duty if they have part time dispatch. There is also an 800 MHZ version called Police 800. Although unlike the priority channel it is not simulcast between vhf and 800.

To answer your other question generally most agencies will monitor all three (priority, MRD or Police 800 and their own town (if they have one) but they will typically only receive assignments over priority and their town channel and monitor MRD for mutual aide

As an example:

One Warwick officer may be assigned to an MVA over the Warwick dispatch channel, while two more are sent to a panic alarm by 911 over priority and a third hears a Town of Goshen car calling for a second unit on MRD and starts heading that way.

Thanks that makes sense. It's an inefficient system in my opinion. Why not just have one Central County Dispatch that covers the whole county?

willjr75 said:

Thanks that makes sense. It's an inefficient system in my opinion. Why not just have one Central County Dispatch that covers the whole county?

Click to expand...

That would make too much sense.