It appears like Milwaukee Police are now using OpenSky only...

[mkescan]

Umm...."tykes" like him might not be able to listen, but neither do the many surrounding law enforcement agencies (Greenfield, MCSO, North Shore agencies, etc). Many of those burbs use to listen in to Milwaukee to catch description of incidents that occur near their borders. The above quote kinda sounds like a anti-interoperability to me. Just my 2 cents.
Tim

Yep, I can't tell you how many times Greenfield got a heads up on Armed Robberies or Foot & Vehicle pursuits on the crazy border they have with Milwaukee. Oh yeah I can't leave out the officer assist Greenfield gives MPD which they never could of done if they wern't monitoring. Sounds like at least one Greenfield squad has a scanner or UHF radio.
Oh yeah, last summer Greenfield canine caught a armed robber on the Milwaukee side of 27th, after hearing MPD say robber ran that way. The guy was hiding in some bushes.

 

[SCPD]

Yep, I can't tell you how many times Greenfield got a heads up on Armed Robberies or Foot & Vehicle pursuits on the crazy border they have with Milwaukee. Oh yeah I can't leave out the officer assist Greenfield gives MPD which they never could of done if they wern't monitoring. Sounds like at least one Greenfield squad has a scanner or UHF radio.
Oh yeah, last summer Greenfield canine caught a armed robber on the Milwaukee side of 27th, after hearing MPD say robber ran that way. The guy was hiding in some bushes.

Won't happen anymore. Thanks to people like tencom.

 

[cpd38]

Any idea if any municipal agencies that border Milwaukee or MCSO will have City of Milwaukee radios installed in their vehicles for monitoring/mutual aid? Just curious if there is some kind of agreement between the different agencies.

The agency I worked for was on UHF while the city we worked in was on 800. We had both UHF and 800 mobiles in our squads for quite some time before we switched over to 800.

From a officer safety standpoint it would make sense. But this is Milwaukee.....

 

[SCPD]

That may happen with Chief Flynn. If Jones was still there the answer would be a big no.

Then who would pay for those radios the city or the agency wanting to listen? No one would pay for expensive radios just to listen.
They do have mutual aid 800mhz analog.
Like I said before the city did a great job on putting themselves on an island.

 

[tencom]

From tencom

You people are just sore losers, and some squads as yet aren,t all equipped with OPEN-SKY. I saw two vehicles In the last few days without OPEN-SKY antennas!

 

[ctadam12]

Why would they be sore losers? They are making valid points, Toolbag...I mean Tencom. Honest mistake there...

What Milwaukee county should have done is taken a trip to Orange County, CA to see how their system works. Every agency is on the same system, with station numbers, a TG for running people (purple channel), a TG for pursuits and emergent broadcasts (red channel). All units in the field and stations monitor Red channel so every one is on the same page.

 

[R8000]

We could also celebrate the fact that it is not monitorable by tykes like you!

Yes Tencom, your right (as I bow to your awesomeness). Monitoring Milwaukee PD from Madison just grinds my gears daily...and my life will never be the same again.

Lets look at this closer Tencom, and I will word it as such so maybe you can understand it.

I live in Madison (as stated on my RR profile).

Madison is too far away from Milwaukee to monitor anything from there.

Outcome : I live too far away to listen to them.

Bonus outcome : I don't really want to listen to Milwaukee

Profit : I don't even listen to my own RR scanner feed radio while I am here.

So how am I sore that I can't monitor them when it's physically not possible to do so anyway due to distance ?

Really man, myself and the rest of us on here just wish you'd get off your soapbox about being monitor able.

Why are you even posting messages on here ? You don't add anything worthwhile to the discussion except for the fact we are all sore about not being able to use a scanner any more....boo hoo. And you seem VERY defensive about the OpenSky protocol which only had it's hey day for a very brief moment in history and is now 10 years outdated, and wasn't even really meant for the public safety market. Let me guess you also sill push 2400 baud modems and Compuserv dial up ?

 

[R8000]

Milwaukee will have fun being on an island like Watertown FD at the tire fire a couple years ago.

I remember that.

Not long after if my memory is correct, they were complaining about other agencies could not talk to them . Hrrmmm. *facepalm*

Let's look at this closer.

Watertown buys a 800 MHZ EDACS trunk system

ALL surrounding counties, cities, villages, etc are on VHF.

Solution : Buy a 800 MHZ trunk system .

Huh ?

Trunked systems do have their place, normally the engineering criteria is a population area of 200,000 people or more.

Apparently Tencom has missed the interwebz discussion about interoperability. The days of having encrypted or non standard radio system formats for day to day public safety operations are gone.
Sure, encryption is just fine for covert, surveillance, investigation, drug or sting operations who have a real need for it. But to encrypt normal operations is asking for trouble. Same thing goes for selecting a radio format that nobody can use but your agency. That's just absurd.

There are two acceptable formats of public safety radio in 2010. Analog, and P25 digital.

Neither of these formats will lock out manufactures, vendors or what not.

Nextedge, Mototrbo and the like are fine for commercial and business applications. Not public safety.

So now the OpenSky system has taken a step in the direction of actually being used to it's full potential, but it's 6 years overdue and with the normal lifespan of radio systems, the end of life for that product is approaching. How much longer will Harris keep that product going ? Would really suck if they released a bulletin that says in 2012 they will no longer sell radios for OpenSky, and the clock starts ticking for the end of support as well ?

Seems like a bad deal for Milwaukee. Before you know it, they will have to start looking at a new radio system to become start of the art......again.

I don't intend to sound like I am just picking on OpenSky, LTR Passport is another format I am against in public safety use. Yes, there are systems out there that use it. It's a dangerous format for Police and Fire to use.

 

[SCPD]

I think I know who tencom might be. The PIO officer from MPD. His post are close to the post on twitter toward mkescan.
If the user really is MPD's PIO I can see why the PD is still heading down hill.

 

[mkescan]

Anyone know if Milwaukee Fire ever got their radios back? I think it's been 2 years now

 

[tencom]

Anyone know if Milwaukee Fire ever got their radios back? I think it's been 2 years now

According to Wisconsin Scanning Web page Quoting a source in the Police Dept. told Wisconsin Scanning that the MFD will be on OPEN-SKY by lste summer.


Wisconsin Scanning Homepage - Trunktracking City of Milwaukee Trunked Radio System Page

 

[ltjweiss]

According to Wisconsin Scanning Web page Quoting a source in the Police Dept. told Wisconsin Scanning that the MFD will be on OPEN-SKY by lste summer.


Wisconsin Scanning Homepage - Trunktracking City of Milwaukee Trunked Radio System Page

now thats just plain wreakless!

 

[mkescan]

According to Wisconsin Scanning Web page Quoting a source in the Police Dept. told Wisconsin Scanning that the MFD will be on OPEN-SKY by lste summer.

I highly doubt that will happen. My source is somebody from Fire Dept

 

[ctadam12]

M.F.D. just needs to stay on their VHF system with NEW radios for field units.

 

[ltjweiss]

M.F.D. just needs to stay on their VHF system with NEW radios for field units.

exactly thats what they should have done with the mpd, they know it works and its safe, and is easily serviceable.

 

[ltjweiss]

M.F.D. just needs to stay on their VHF system with NEW radios for field units.

exactly! thats also what they should have done with the mpd, they know it works and its safe, and is easily serviceable.

 

[R8000]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C145 Safari/528.16)

Thats nice ! Only phase 2 is done, two more phases to go ! At this rate the system will be done in 2020. Based on the number of times GE/Ericsson/Tyco/MA/Com/Harris has been sold off, it will be ran by Fisher-Price by the time this system is done. Yea, would have been better off to cut the losses and tell MA/Com to get out years ago and start off fresh.

 

[mkescan]

Were there better types of OpenSky systems that Milwaukee could of got, or did they buy the only type that was out at the time?
What are the next generation Harris radios mentioned in some threads here on Radio Reference?

 

[ctadam12]

Why does it always have to be Motorola or MA/COM? What about Johnson or Kenwood? I have used radios from both companies and I thought they made a very good, solid product. We (USCG) just replaced all of the Moto XTS radios with Johnson.

 

[ctadam12]

Johnson ES portables