TTU / City of Lubbock Interoperability

I didn't want to hijack the thread that was already discussing the TTU shooting, so please forgive me for starting a new one..

One thing that's been buzzing between Lubbock PD officers, Lubbock Firefighters, UMC EMS Paramedics and TTU Police officers in the aftermath of the shooting on campus - Interoperability. Most of them don't know that's what they're talking about, but it's a hot topic between all personnel involved. I don't think that there are any concerns at the admin levels, but the individual officers and firefighters on scene are very concerned about not being able to communicate with TTU police officers - the ones in charge of this scene - during the incident.

I have worked football games on campus as a city employee, and can confirm that it's very irritating to need information from a TTU official but have to relay through dispatch or another person on campus in order to get information, and that's a non-emergency situation. I have been on site during fires in the dorm, trying to relay through dispatch to TTU dispatch to get an officer or TTU fire marshal to a certain dorm or stairwell.. . .

I couldn't imagine how difficult it was the night of the shooting: FIRE and EMS waiting for a location to respond to, or waiting for an all-clear. . . TTU PD asking for help, getting a heavy response from Lubbock PD, Texas DPS, and Lubbock County SO, but nobody can talk to the agency in charge?!?

I know there are tons of politics involved, and I know that this problem will NEVER go away, but I wanted to vent my frustrations and hear some discussion. <end rant>

Two Words "Unified Command"

Wow! FireJustin, you mean the City of Lubbock and Texas Tech are unable to talk to one another on 800 MHz? I wonder if Daily Wells even brought this up? City of Midland dispatch is setup for interoperability on VHF & 800. In fact they could talk directly to DPS units who have the PBRPC VHF/800 Regional radios.

Fire Justine, Do you know if the new P25 system has a patch? I know the EDACS system had patches to patch TGs together. EMS could patch Aerocare through the MED chs, thus having interoperability between helicopter,hospital , EMS base and units at the scene if it was close proximaty.. I have noticed that even during football games that there was ALOT of relaying between units from different agencies and no direct communication with each other. I miss the days of 155.37/154.95. Also I heard thru the grapevine that LPD was going to take over investigation as the lead agency. Have you heard if there was going to to be a discussion because of the lack of interoprability or is this still to early?

Also to add, for some that may not be aware: there was a delay in issuing an active shooter alert because the incident happened at the police station and the pd is the one that issue the alerts.( and evidently there was not a backup alerting plan).The delay was 35 minutes.

The reason that county fire has a patched TG is because of the butane tank company on US 87 fire several years ago.The county VFD was assisting on the fire and could not talk to the LFD. Which brings me to the next question: What agencies/ channels should be patched into the Lubbock system, that is not currently on it that should be?

what ever happened with the 2 channels that the sheriffs department and police had on the old edacs system the LEA channels if i remember correctly a few times during a pursuit that either department was in they would request the other department to go to that channel and do all communications through that channel.

Patch?

I know that TTU and Lubbock are working on two separate P25 trunking systems. Why don't they use a patch or add them to the Lubbock system? I am guessing this has more to do with the state Texas bidding process. TTU had an existing P25 trunking system before Lubbock went to P25 trunking. They may have been locked in that process.

I was just looking at the Lubbock P25 system in the database and there is a patch to TTU PD ,so why wasnt that utilized during the incident?

I'm going to try and address all of these in one post, so let's get started:

Harold: You're absolutely correct. There should have been, but all people involved (that I have spoken with) reported to their normal chain of command, and all interagency operations were handled through individual dispatch centers. I am not aware if LEA1 and 2 were used, but those don't include TTU PD.

TexScan: Midland had it all figured out from what I remember of the EDACS system they used when I was there. In Lubbock County there are no patches between TTU's system and the Lubbock City/County system. I do know that DPS, AeroCare, TABC, and the Medical Examiner are on the City/County system. Fire, PD, and EMS radios have a channel labeled for talking with TTU (I'll have to figure out the name later and report back) but I do not think it's on their system, rather it's a conventional channel to use if all parties remember it's there. There has been no training between agencies via this comms method.

TwoByTwo: Some of the above addressed what you said. I'll add 1) Thanks for the information on the Wylie Propane fire - I had no idea that's why the patch exists. 2) All Fire/EMS/PD radios (and maybe the rest of the city/county system users?) have access to some of the EOC and Task Force channels. Again - it's rarely used because there is little training on the use of these interoperable talkgroups and users typically stick with what they know in large scale events. We have tried - via active shooter or airport disaster drills - to use these other channels. . . For some reason, everyone falls back to their own channels. EVEN IF we get them all on the TF and EOC channels, they stick to their own and there is rarely a true unified command, rather 3 or 4 IC's operating their own piece of the pie. 3) as far as patches go - I think TTU is the only real major player that is missing. It would be nice to see Covenant Ambulances, TacMed, Lubbock AID to be able to tie in with the system in the even of a large-scale response. 4) I last head that LPD was the lead in the incident investigation, and DPS was going to review TTU PD Policies and Procedures. I hope that comms are covered in depth, but we all know that likely will only be a small piece of the big picture.

LilD806: LEA1 and LEA2 are still active, but again only between LCSO, LPD, and I understand only a few DPS units and their dispatcher have access to these talkgroups. I don't know if all troopers have 800mhz radios in their cars.

Ensnared: I don't know how difficult it would be to tie the Motorola Phase I system into the Harris Phase II system, I'm not a backside hardware guy.

Great discussion, thank you all for participating!

I'll retract my statement about the patch as I have now received conflicting private messages. It has been said that the patch is not active or does not work, but it's also been said that unitrunker data from that incident shows it was used a handful of times. Perhaps someone could chime in with details, but all of the communications I heard were on agency channels, not patches.

Ensnared said:

I know that TTU and Lubbock are working on two separate P25 trunking systems. Why don't they use a patch or add them to the Lubbock system? I am guessing this has more to do with the state Texas bidding process. TTU had an existing P25 trunking system before Lubbock went to P25 trunking. They may have been locked in that process.

Click to expand...

It's Motorola v. Harris. Tech's system is a Motorola Astro 25 system (L-Core would be my guess) while Lubbock's is the Harris system. There are some politics that go behind that as well and often it boils down to something as simple as "we aren't going to let you put those Motorola radios on our Harris system" even though, minus proprietary features the systems, should be 100% backwards compatible with any subscribers that meet the spec for P25. Well, another problem is the sheer amount of Astro 25 subscribers still in use in Texas are really slowing down Phase 2 migrations (but let's put aside the fact we are talking Phase 1 versus Phase 2)...it's just politics and a big downside to municipal governments owning systems and using them as airtime services to other agencies/municipalities.

Now, all that being said I really can't speak for whatever consoles Harris recommends/sells but patching is not trivial. It's typically something done by the dispatcher when they need the patch and not typically left in place full time. With say, Motorola's MCC5500 or MCC7500 consoles, one simply hits the patch icon on the screen and selects the two "channels" to be patched. So if things are not being patched, it could be for several reasons. I know on the older consoles, if a dispatcher created a patch involving neighboring dispatch centers and didn't notify the others it could lead to a whole world of confusion with multiple dispatchers attempting to take calls at the various centers. A good amount of the issue is with the two different systems in use creating some "too many captains on this boat" type of scenario. Now, if a third party dispatch service was handling it all, wouldn't be as large of an issue but suspect that is not the case.

Detailed Response

MCore25 said:

It's Motorola v. Harris. Tech's system is a Motorola Astro 25 system (L-Core would be my guess) while Lubbock's is the Harris system. There are some politics that go behind that as well and often it boils down to something as simple as "we aren't going to let you put those Motorola radios on our Harris system" even though, minus proprietary features the systems, should be 100% backwards compatible with any subscribers that meet the spec for P25. Well, another problem is the sheer amount of Astro 25 subscribers still in use in Texas are really slowing down Phase 2 migrations (but let's put aside the fact we are talking Phase 1 versus Phase 2)...it's just politics and a big downside to municipal governments owning systems and using them as airtime services to other agencies/municipalities.

Now, all that being said I really can't speak for whatever consoles Harris recommends/sells but patching is not trivial. It's typically something done by the dispatcher when they need the patch and not typically left in place full time. With say, Motorola's MCC5500 or MCC7500 consoles, one simply hits the patch icon on the screen and selects the two "channels" to be patched. So if things are not being patched, it could be for several reasons. I know on the older consoles, if a dispatcher created a patch involving neighboring dispatch centers and didn't notify the others it could lead to a whole world of confusion with multiple dispatchers attempting to take calls at the various centers. A good amount of the issue is with the two different systems in use creating some "too many captains on this boat" type of scenario. Now, if a third party dispatch service was handling it all, wouldn't be as large of an issue but suspect that is not the case.

Click to expand...

Thank you for that detailed response. We are dealing with a rather bizarre situation here in Waco and the surrounding agencies. Waco built a P25 with some of the TxWarn frequencies. Then, Woodway, Lorena, & Hewitt started their own VHF P25 system. It works great, but not in buildings. They wasted tons of money. To attempt to fix the initial problems, they went to Galveston to buy auctioned marine band frequencies. I wonder why Hewitt didn't use a patch too? I am suspecting $$$$$$.

I would imagine America could make a dent in the national debt with all of the money wasted on interoperability as directed by clueless politicians, snake-oil sales tactics, and deals under the table, I suspect.

This has occurred all across this country. Harris seems to be too big for their britches. They are acting like it.

Bottom line. We end up paying for their mistakes while first responders pay the ultimate price when their radio does not get out. At least we are not talking about Lubbock going to Open Sky. I hope Lubbock gets this fixed because the flat terrain is awesome for P25. According to one of those, "most dangerous cities" survey, Lubbock is having a violent crime wave as of late. Of course, back in the day, TDCJ-ID used to dump parolees in certain larger cities like Lubbock, SA, Houston. Now, thank God, they drop them off where they offended. Lubbock might get interesting to scan. At present, it pales in comparison to Waco, Killeen, Houston, SA, etc.