Active shooter at chardon high

[Nasby]

Geauga County Sheriff and many, many agencies are on scene of an active shooter at the Chardon High School in Geauga County.

 

[blantonl]

Geauga County SO response starts at the 13:45 mark on this feed archive:

(7:22 AM - 7:52 AM)
http://areg.radioreference.com/20120227/2/201202270622-590088-5785.mp3

Subsequent response here:

(7:52 AM - 8:22 AM)
http://areg.radioreference.com/20120227/4/201202270652-823658-5785.mp3

(8:22 AM - 8:52 AM)
http://areg.radioreference.com/20120227/4/201202270722-214252-5785.mp3

 

[a388sig2]

OSP Response

OSP was being dispatched by Ravenna at the time.

While not as intense as the Sheriff's radio traffic, their response is heard here about 22mins in:


http://areg.radioreference.com/20120227/2/201202270621-469617-1554.mp3

The Portage county feed had some of the best MARCS recordings from OSP to Metro Life Flight. Absolutely shameful to hear units in the manhunt say, "sporadic radio coverage, and no cell at best." OSP ground units said they needed a helo with FLIR tracking, but the only one they have en route is from OSP in Columbus. (Does Cleveland PD still have a helo?)

 

[Nasby]

One student is confirmed dead and four others were injured.
All were taken by medical helicopter to local hospitals.

 

[jerk]

OSP was being dispatched by Ravenna at the time.

While not as intense as the Sheriff's radio traffic, their response is heard here about 22mins in:
http://areg.radioreference.com/20120227/2/201202270621-469617-1554.mp3

The Portage county feed had some of the best MARCS recordings from OSP to Metro Life Flight. Absolutely shameful to hear units in the manhunt say, "sporadic radio coverage, and no cell at best." OSP ground units said they needed a helo with FLIR tracking, but the only one they have en route is from OSP in Columbus. (Does Cleveland PD still have a helo?)

It is a rural area,
but the cell phone issue was it was simply overload... the kids immediately started calling and texting, and one interviewed said nothing was getting through-text or call.
It could have been an issue for the radios as well.

 

[a388sig2]

It is a rural area,
but the cell phone issue was it was simply overload... the kids immediately started calling and texting, and one interviewed said nothing was getting through-text or call.
It could have been an issue for the radios as well.

I'd understand the sporadic MARCS radio coverage if five years ago OSHP staff didn't repeatedly report coverage issues to Columbus, and little action was taken.

Understand, the manhunt yesterday focussed around downtown Chardon, this wasn't out in the middle of nowhere, the shooter was apprehended on US 6 close to the school. It's not like he made it down to Punderson or Nelson Ledges.

 

[digitalanalog]

while i can appreciate the coverage, this is why I HATE digital, the audio is Horrid as with most digital.....
I hope the ground units responding get better coverage then we do with scanners.

 

[a388sig2]

while i can appreciate the coverage, this is why I HATE digital, the audio is Horrid as with most digital.....
I hope the ground units responding get better coverage then we do with scanners.

Agreed, guess it could always be worse, have you heard the IP based audio on OpenSky systems? Horrific.

One thing I noted from yesterday, is that despite all the millions spent on interoperability, all training and the drills, it still came down to hard working dispatchers relaying info to other departments via the phone. Geauga County is a very close nit community, and having good relationships with other departments and a unified county communications system really proved helpful. You wouldn't get that kind of cooperation amongst the various political divisions in Cuyahoga County...thanks to a legacy of corruption and decades of political power struggles.

In Chardon, the city and county really did a great job with their quick, coordinated response, and possibly saved many more lives because of it. Just a shame those involved in the manhunt had to struggle to communicate.

 

[GrumpyAeroGuy]

I wonder when the shoe is going to drop and the 800lb (no pun intended) digital gorilla in the room is going to get recognized. This is from a fairly well publicized tragic event in my neck of the woods a while back.


link

But problems crop up when more than one firefighter tries to talk at once, resulting in firefighters getting a busy signal when they try to call and in garbled transmissions due to background noise like engines and burning buildings. In addition, metal construction blocks communication when firefighters are inside large buildings like downtown high rises or hospitals.

“We’re finding out this is happening every day, not just in big fires,” said B.J. Jetter, Sycamore Township Fire Chief and president of the Hamilton County Fire Chiefs Association.


I still have friends that are firefighters (I was one as well some time ago---pre digital days)

The shortcomings of digital systems are well known on the fireground. How many more lives is it going to cost before folks either demand systems that work as advertised, or go back to what really worked well.

I never remember one issue using UHF radios during my day. Trunked (even analog systems) always had issues in commerical structures. So much so, that the local comm center set-aside one 800 frequency for dedicated simplex communications for this very situation, as the trunked system could never get your request out of the building for some reason.....

Those 800 radios scared me even back in the day. IT would appear that progress has moved us backwards in the name of sexy sounding technical communications systems that appear to be falling on their face.

 

[GrumpyAeroGuy]

while i can appreciate the coverage, this is why I HATE digital, the audio is Horrid as with most digital.....
I hope the ground units responding get better coverage then we do with scanners.

from what my former brothers tell me, don't bet on it.

 

[digitalanalog]

-----> My Thoughts <-----

 

[Geauga_SO]

Despite a 200 % increase in traffic from our average system loading for this time of day the Geauga County 800 system worked excellent, during the first two hours of the incident the system loading was one push to talk (PTT) request every 4 seconds.

There were zero system busies, every PTT went through on the first try. In post incident debriefings no user of the Geauga system reported radio coverage deficiencies.

 

[digitalanalog]

Have you listened to the posted mp3 files?

Despite a 200 % increase in traffic from our average system loading for this time of day the Geauga County 800 system worked excellent, during the first two hours of the incident the system loading was one push to talk (PTT) request every 4 seconds.

There were zero system busies, every PTT went through on the first try. In post incident debriefings no user of the Geauga system reported radio coverage deficiencies.

 

[a388sig2]

Despite a 200 % increase in traffic from our average system loading for this time of day the Geauga County 800 system worked excellent, during the first two hours of the incident the system loading was one push to talk (PTT) request every 4 seconds.

There were zero system busies, every PTT went through on the first try. In post incident debriefings no user of the Geauga system reported radio coverage deficiencies.

Great work Geauga SO!!! As this community grieves, it's refreshing to know that we have the brave men and women of your department serving the community.

It's great to know that your system performed so well under stress. I hope this incident serves as an eye opener for the state and MARCS. I hope they can use this as an opportunity to see the need to improve when field officers report coverage inconsistencies, and truly make local officer safety concerns a statewide priority .

 

[Geauga_SO]

Have you listened to the posted mp3 files?

Don't judge the system by what you hear online. The streaming audio especially on the sheriff talkgroup is poor quality, we are aware of the need to improve our streaming setup, but it's a low priority & other projects have to get done first.

 

[digitalanalog]

Thats why I said in my original post,

I hope the ground units responding get better coverage then we do with scanners.

I am very glad the LEO's are able to communicate.

Don't judge the system by what you hear online. The streaming audio especially on the sheriff talkgroup is poor quality, we are aware of the need to improve our streaming setup, but it's a low priority & other projects have to get done first.

 

[Confuzzled]

but the cell phone issue was it was simply overload... the kids immediately started calling and texting, and one interviewed said nothing was getting through-text or call.

This is where they should be able to shut down non-essential cell phones, or at least drop them into a lower priority tier for tower access.

Of course that would require cooperation between the cell carriers and the PS agencies to identify which phones are more essential.

 

[a388sig2]

CPD Helo

OSP units on the ground in the manhunt were heard on MARCS requesting a helicopter. They were told by dispatch that one was en route from Columbus.

Cleveland PD confirmed today they were never asked for mutual aid with their helo. I would hope that those investigating this incident would make it protocol to at least build a contact sheet for the closest aviation. Just like they do with on-call K-9 lists for drugs, explosives and tracking.

 

[digitalanalog]

Columbus??????????????
Cleveland is Right down the street....Bad call on someones part...

 

[KB8TZX]

I'm just curious if anyone knows of captured audio from the Life Flight TG or the Tac TG. I see no streams for them, and I'm in Eastern Cuyahoga where UHF is still in use so I've never felt the need to buy a fancy scanner when I can just use the extended receiver on my HT to hear the locals.

I'm guessing such streams aren't part of a regular scanner feed as they have limited passive listening value, but I was reminded how I have often wondered how well the comms between air and ground work on a system like MARCS. One would surmise they should work no better and nor worse than any other air-to-ground V/UHF system that exist(ed) given the layout and height of the system towers, flight altitude, and the line-of-sight nature of the band being used.