Elmwood Park joining NORCOM

[werinshades]

Trying to link the Consolidation Plan, but it states Elmwood Park will be leaving the West Suburban Consolidated Dispatch Center and joining NORCOM on June 1st, 2021. I noticed Elmwood Park is currently being dispatched on the encrypted Starcom talkgroups, will they be using the NORCOM UHF-T frequencies after the consolidation?

 

[Awesomeman92]

Doubt it. Rumor is Norcomm is going over at some point soon with Net 17 and I know they have at least one console on SC21 already, possibly more. Since they're private there's really no way to tell what's going on internally like there is with public PSAPs. The only reason I could see a change in talkgroup is if WSCDC "owns" the talkgroup and wants it for something else, but even then it would be a simple reprogram to create a new talkgroup. I'd be surprised if they even still had UHF radios in the cars, but if they do they could use them as long as they have Net 16 programmed into them which they probably would for interop. I would mark it plausible but unlikely.

 

[ILjim]

Highly doubt they'll go back to analog. I also heard that Net-17 agencies will be switching to (likely encrypted) StarCom21 talkgroups soon. At least one of those agencies, Broadview PD, often uses the Cook Co ISPERN TG when putting out messages and such. As for Elmwood Park, I think they'll remain on their TG and NORCOMM would just relay messages to the analog nets if necessary. Also, I'm pretty sure that NORCOMM has access to both Nodes 1 and 5 of StarCom21, so I don't think there'd be any problems should Elmwood Park continue to use it.