March update
QUINCY —A $1.2 million radio digital radio upgrade is being pursued in Adams County on top of hundreds of thousands more for mobile radios.
Quincy Police Chief Adam Yates and 911 Director Jessica Douglas say the expense will pay off in improved sound quality and signal reception when coordinated operations are the difference between life and death.
“The 911 Center (is) a joint venture between the city of Quincy and Adams County,” Douglas said. “When we talk about ‘digital radio’ related projects, we mean we’re upgrading our existing conventional VHF simulcast … infrastructure to P25 digital capability. Analog technology has served us well, but it does fall short a little (in a modern digital environment).
"Today our analog radios provide communication between all (emergency response) personnel. They’re simplistic and provide a really simple user experience for our first responders, but they’re very susceptible to background noise in noisy environments and radio interference that can produce static.”
911’s current infrastructure consists of nine transmitter sites scattered throughout the county and city. The upgrades would improve hardware and add a 10th site.
“As the responders start to move towards the boundaries of our coverage area — that’s when voice transmission starts getting a little garbled,” she said.
The rollout must proceed carefully because the half-a-dozen emergency departments using the system will be upgrading their portable radios at different times as budgets allow.
“Not everybody is going to have their radios all at one time. So we have to design and roll out the system in such a way that allows for that maximum flexibility,” Douglas said. “It’s really like replacing a flat tire on a moving vehicle.”
The Joint Emergency Telephone System Board has already approved the $1.2 million for infrastructure. The county and city have been upgrading their departments’ radios more or less out of their own pockets.
After the upgrades transmitters can be programmed for digital or analog communication, allowing for a grace period before the full switch.
Post-swap benefits will be reduced background noise, increased security of communication and less troubleshooting comms during tense operations.
Yates says QPD has felt the inconsistency in quality for the last five years.
“I often remind people that, of all the tools that a police officer has on their gun belt, the portable radio is the most important tool an officer has,” he said. “It’s important that these radios work when officers need them to, but we’ve seen a significant decline in the reliability of the portable radios that allow us to communicate with the dispatch center. “
The radios the department purchased in 2019 were specifically chosen for their capacity to be upgraded to the digital format.
“Analog signal is an old technology,” Yates said. “Take, for example, an officer responding to a disturbance where there’s not a lot of information provided to the operator before he arrives. Say he realizes there’s an individual that needs to be treated by paramedics. The officer is now out of his car and in the house. What he would like to do is get on the radio and give dispatch detailed information about their injuries so that an ambulance can respond for treatment. At times, our officers are not about to do that. So the officer needs to either grab a cellphone and call the 911 center or they have to go back to their squad car to get on (its) mobile radio (which has better reception.) That takes the officer away from the situation that they’re trying to deal with — it’s just not good business…police, fire, EMS, the Sheriff's Department, the Highway Department; they’re all communications that run through the 911 center.”
In another example, Yates said officers securing locations have lost communication between officers at opposite corners of a structure.
“Officer A may well not know what Officer B is doing. Officer C might not be able to relay what’s happening to officers that are supposed to be surrounding a house; whether the suspect is in custody, whether they believe the suspect is about to flee out the back of the house — these communication issues are huge safety concerns for us,” Yates said. “And we've been dealing with those pretty consistently over the last five to seven years.”
Officers are trained to troubleshoot their radios by holding a radio a certain way or finding more favorable geography, but finagling with tech defeats their purpose in such delicate situations.
“No portable radio is perfect in every situation,” Yates said. “There’s always going to be environmental factors, (especially indoors). What we're looking for is more consistent functionality when our officers are outside of buildings during a foot pursuit, or while they're standing in an intersection working in a traffic crash: we need those communications to work. And hopefully, this upgrade to the digital platform will significantly improve that functionality.”
For the Quincy Police Department alone, the City Council approved $196,146 for 21 digital squad car radios and 80 portable radios in January. Yates doesn’t have a firm timeline but he anticipates the department will be prepared for a switch to digital later in the year.
