Napa Red is now encrypted. This is the primary conventional dispatch channel for the PD and SO.
Napa PD has Encrypted
- Thread starter mharris
- Start date
Sounds like it's user-selectable. I've heard a few transmissions in the clear, but the vast majority (including dispatch) are encrypted.
This day has been coming and the rest of the SO/PD channels will convert to P25/ENC will not be far behind along with the other LE agency's (St Helena PD/Calistoga PD) switching to ENC.
it took me a couple weeks to realize that the Napa SO channel has been silent... This should not be but i guess nothing i can do about it unless anyone has a work around. I know there are many other LE that have gone full ENC so I suppose the "look at the positive" still exists.
Considering the recent immediate fire evacuations of thousands of people in the middle of the night, with every available neighboring law agency (Yolo, Solano, Sac PD, Mendo, Colusa, Oak PD, Marin) resource pouring in by 3-4am, and those with the county's dispatch net pre-programmed had some efficient interoperability, will Napa have (or keep the current) ability to turn off E and interface with neighboring guests? And more importantly than the technical question, do they have and will they retain the training to do so? If I were a local, I'd be asking these questions at the next county supervisor's mtg and requesting action and a report back by Spring.
For what it's worth, when we provided mutual aid to Sonoma and Lake counties in the 2017/2018 fires, outside agencies were receiving loaner portables when they checked in.
LE doesn't have anywhere near the same mutual aid planning/experience that fire does. There isn't an expectation that agencies will have each other's frequencies programmed, unless they're an immediate neighbor providing mutual aid on a regular basis. Also cops are typically not as radio-savvy as firefighters, so they may have another agency's frequencies buried somewhere in their template and not even know it.
That matches my experience almost completely. Cops just don't know how to seamlessly integrate into a single organization governed by the Incident Command System (ICS). The one exception I've seen is on fires (predominately in SoCal) where the CHP provide traffic control or closures on roads in and around fires. They have an officer in charge who serves in the command portion of the incident ICS organization. That officer and maybe a few of the on the ground types attend the twice daily briefings. The officers don't necessarily understand the ICS, but the officer in charge of CHP officer is well grounded in it. I've been on fires where Caltrans also has a liaison person in the ICS organization of a fire when a state maintained highway is involved. Sometimes they provide personnel at roadblocks to supplement the CHP. Again the liaison person knows where they fit in the ICS organization.
However, the cops are the worst when it comes to understanding mutual aid programmed radios. They have to be told what channel to be on and where to press the mic button. Contrast that to wildland fire resources, every division sup, engine captain, dozer boss and crew boss has a copy of the region's frequency directory in their gear. Most know how to program the Bendix-King radio if one of their programs or zones don't provide the right frequency for them to use. Once a comm plan is in place they usually let someone in the communications unit clone they radio. They know which zone in the radio is open for cloning so they don't overwrite what they use on their home unit. As a crew boss I never had my crew's radios cloned. I programmed my own radio and carried a cloning cable in the glove box of my agency truck. If we arrived at a fire hot (with an immediate priority assignment given to you at the check in area) I would accomplish this prior to leaving camp or staging. I got real practiced and accomplished this task very quickly after receiving the comm plan or piece of paper where the frequencies in use were printed if you were away from the home unit during initial attack.
Fire personnel are also familiar enough to understand the regional and NIFC radio systems. If someone says to them a check in that NIFC Tac 1 is being used on Division A and NIFC Tac 2 is for Division Z they know where to find those in the zones of their BK radios. If someone says we are using R5 Tac 7 on Division A and R5 Tac 4 on Division Z they are also familiar with both frequencies. If they say that the Sierra NF Fire/Emergency repeater net is being used for command and how to find all of the frequency in zones on their BK's. The newer BK's and other brands have the capability of copying individual channels from numerous zones to a zone which will be called a command zone and build their own program. Most resource captains/bosses know how to do this. During the initial attack phase there might not be anyone in a comm unit yet. Remember that initial attack is the first day, by day shift of the second day an incident becomes an extended attack and frequencies will be changed per the Geographical Area Coordination Center (GACC) and National Interagency Coordination Center (NIFC).
None of this should be interpreted to disparage law enforcement officers. They don't understand the ICS because they already have so much to think about doing their daily jobs. ICS integration is left to lieutenants and higher ranks and even those higher ranks don't have the ICS knowledge that most crew bosses have. Again, these higher ranks have a great deal to think about just running the daily activities of their agencies.
