incendent at frenship high school

so i listened to the incendent at frenship high school from the beginning and i must say i was impressed by it all as far as lubbock police directing all traffic immediately to the LEA 1 channel as well the sheriff deptartment did that as well they directed all traffic to LEA 1 i was impressed how they handled it..... i did hear radio traffic on dps frequencies and im just disappointed in that part as far as why cant the texas dps be on the lubbock p25 system i mean i know it probably wasnt a huge deal but their dispatch is still having to relay information that they are receiving from the sheriff department.

I am sure they learned some things after the interop problems I read about after the Tech officer got shot.

I am sure some of DPS access to the system but that may only be dispatch in some cases. There was a state law in place that they have to have access to each county. I know here in the San Antonio area not all troopers have radios that work on the City/county Provoice system and just have the standard vhf radio in their car. The state usually doesn't issue handheld radios so a trooper usually has to buy their own and a lot don't want the expense. Our DPS guys around here that work with combined units get issued a Provoice radio from the city and have access to all the city and county channels. The DPS helo is used regularly by the local sheriffs department and other smaller towns. I have heard them coordinate with troopers passing along info on vhf frequencies.

Out of curisosity does LEA stand for Law Enforcement Agency? Im surprised there only 2 TGs for this, unless there are more that I havent heard.

With the different TGs available to a variety depts ( ie-EOC,South Plains Incident Command, Task Force) What constitues which TG group is going to be used during an incident? I heard several years ago the water dept talking on an EOC talk group so EOC must be in most radios.

Several weeks ago I heard a Hale Co unit call the LSO on 155.535 advising of the chase was coming into Lubbock Co. The perp was firingweapons at the officers. Some of the radio comms Lubbock units was on an encrytped TAC TG.
Not sure if DPS has access to LEA 1 & 2 but they do have access to LSO DIspatch..

On the P25 system I have heard DPS on the LPD dispatch and...either Talk 1 or 2 I can't remember which one specifically.

DPS was assisting PD to set up a cordon to search for some suspects that fled. This was about a year ago so I don't remember all the details...

I know assumptions are dangerous but I feel feel safe assuming if DPS can get Talk 1 they can get talk 2...

Speaking of Hale county...I know the LCSO has an encrypted TAC channel. What's interesting is that my 436 actually picks up the encryption instead of ignoring it like it does on all of the other P25 (and Provoice) systems I've monitored. I would love to know why this is.

Despite this, I've heard a few clear transmissions on that channel. I don't know if the radios they use are like our Motorolas where one can switch back and forth or not. Either way...it's still kinda cool...

lild806 said:

i did hear radio traffic on dps frequencies and im just disappointed in that part as far as why cant the texas dps be on the lubbock p25 system i mean i know it probably wasnt a huge deal but their dispatch is still having to relay information that they are receiving from the sheriff department.

Click to expand...

Politics.

City of Lubbock's P25 system is a Harris system. Most municipally owned Harris systems in the state have a strict, Harris SU only policy. Three prime examples of this policy are Abilene and Lubbock. A couple of exceptions are Bell County...where many of the existing subscribers threatened to abandon the (new) P25 system if Motorola SU's couldn't be used...and LCRA which is technically not a municipality per say and is also one of the few wide-area Harris P25 systems in the state.

For one reason or another, DPS tends to stick with Motorola SUs (DIR contracting, majority of the wide-area systems in the state are Astro 25, etc). Currently, they seem to have standardized on the Motorola APX7500 mobile in a V/7/800 configuration.

I put my feelers out to get some answers to the questions mentioned above, and this is what I know so far.
DPS Dispatchers have a Harris console in their office to talk with LPD, LSO, and all of the different school districts that operate on the system. DPS 105 (helicopter) has a Harris mobile programmed to 'nearly everything in the area'. It is understood that some supervisors may have Harris mobile radios. Other than that, I would assume that it's cost or politics that keep them from operating on the local system. Perhaps if it were regional they would participate?

As far as the operations at the Frenship incident, it certainly sounded like it went smoother than previous large-scale incidents in the past, specifically the Airport Disaster Drill and the TTU shooting. LPD still likes to operate on their own secure channels, but they did have a unified command with LSO, FISD PD and DPS, so comms seemed to flow more evenly.

South Plains IMT talkgroups are primarily in LPD and LFD radios, and some other city employees. Most radios on the system, if not all, have access to most of the ICS- Task Force channels, while supervisors have access to the ICS-CMD groups. I can probably put together a better radio layout if anyone is interested.
@TwoByTwo, most agencies fall back on their own policies and procedures (and training) and operate on agency-specific talkgroups. It's still pretty hard to get them off local TGs and onto interop TGs.

This is a good example of why Interoperability gateways came to be. They solve all this "I can't talk to that agency on their frequency" problems. You don't have to have a radio that will match the agency radio system. Just a dispatch center that can patch the different systems together.

But it does require a dispatcher to know how to make the patch.

MCore25 said:

City of Lubbock's P25 system is a Harris system. Most municipally owned Harris systems in the state have a strict, Harris SU only policy. Three prime examples of this policy are Abilene and Lubbock. A couple of exceptions are Bell County...where many of the existing subscribers threatened to abandon the (new) P25 system if Motorola SU's couldn't be used...and LCRA which is technically not a municipality per say and is also one of the few wide-area Harris P25 systems in the state.

Click to expand...

MCHD in Montgomery County is another excellent example of cross-vendor interoperability. Open subscriber policy and ISSI connection to TxWARN.

motorola_otaku said:

MCHD in Montgomery County is another excellent example of cross-vendor interoperability. Open subscriber policy and ISSI connection to TxWARN.

Click to expand...

TxWARN is actually a fine example of why ISSI gateways are great.


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