It seems the sheriff department is starting to issue Kenwood radios. A switch from motorola. They must have gotten a good deal from them. This would stop the rumors that they are switching to saia communications and the patch is for interoperability of other agencies.
Starting? They have been issued to road patrol for months. There are many pros to utilizing Kenwoods for their situation. The perpetual licensing feature available is a huge benefit, allowing them to move their "entitlements" from one radio to another rather than buying the same features over and over as they upgrade/replace radios. Theoretically, it saves taxpayers money. They purchased VP8000s for the "road" deputies and supposedly the NX5300 (well, VP equivalent) for the Correctional Facility and Holding Center. The RFP I found a while back included those radios, the features you'd probably expect, and also called for a repeated channel for whichever one didn't, or needed another, or something like that.
Seeing Motorola's on their deputies in the field is the minority now. The handful I've seen have been on jail deps, or the reserve deputies.
