'It was dead air': Radio collapse crippled Parkland shooting response

[rivermersey]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/b...tatements-20181214-story.html#nt=oft12aH-1la1

South Florida Sun Sentinel
December 14, 2018

As a sea of deputies descended on Stoneman Douglas High, their hunt for a killer descended into chaos as their antiquated radio system collapsed.

New statements released Friday of police on the ground show in vivid detail how critical the communications failures were as children were injured and dying inside the 1200 building, the school’s freshman building.

“I couldn’t get on the radio myself several times,” Broward Sheriff Office Lt. Steven O’Neill said, telling investigators that commanders resorted to using “people as runners” — cops on bike and on foot — to transmit messages to each other. “Hey go down. Tell those three Coral Springs guys this is where we need ‘em to go,” O’Neill explained. “Because we simply couldn’t transmit on the radio or receive.”

A year earlier, Broward deputies also had experienced serious failures of their radios in the mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, where five died but fears of a second shooter led to widespread pandemonium. They were using the same system when a 19-year-old gunman slaughtered 17 staff and students at Stoneman Douglas on Feb. 14.


The radios remained in place even though the topic had been on the county commission’s agendas for at least seven years — with high-priced lobbyists pushing to win the multimillion-dollar contract.

In May 2017, four months after the airport shooting, the county finally approved $59.5 million to replace the system, but it is not expected to be ready to use until the end of 2019.

The statements of deputies who responded to the Parkland shooting point to the radios being a key problem in the highly flawed response, including the ability of commanders to coordinate tasks and take control of the situation.

 

[ipfd320]

there was a few threads on this subject after the shootings--there were also many reports on radio this and radio that--what it came down to was everyone keying up the mics at the same time / units stepping all over each other and so ---you cant blame a radio system failure when the systems fault is the users locking up the system--this goes on all levels not only pd but fd also

honestly ive seen 20+ year old systems work a heck of a lot better than these newer systems out there with less hardware/software junk and also less towers cloggin up the scenery

 

[MTS2000des]

-what it came down to was everyone keying up the mics at the same time / units stepping all over each other and so ---you cant blame a radio system failure when the systems fault is the users locking up the system--this goes on all levels not only pd but fd also

Astro 25 systems can be configured to not allow "doubling". That's how our 7.16 system was built during staging. No one can "talk" while another subscriber is keyed up on a talk group. Consoles always have priority and instant transmit allows a dispatcher to overtake the outbound audio path while still allowing him/her to hear inbound traffic on said talkgroup.

But in the end, you're right, users don't always follow training and protocol during such an incident as a mass casualty. It's good to find the shortcomings in our systems but we also have to examine all the facts and consider all angles before shotgunning a response.

 

[TampaTyron]

Another issue to be aware of is that of control channel resources. A control channel can be overwhelmed even if you still have additional voice/data capacity left. In a situation where there is major chaos, just hundreds of users jumping around to different talkgroups to try to "hear the action" can cave in a system. If you watch the affiliations there reaches a point where the control channel will studder a bit, then roll to the next one. I dont know if newer systems are less vulnerable to this issue, but it is easy to fix equipment and hard to fix people. TT

 

[APX8000]

The system did exactly what it was designed to do. Everyone in the County switched to that dispatch talkgroup which caused an affiliation. The controller “throttled” (Motorola term) to process the thousands of affiliations occurring. That combined with everyone trying to PTT at the same time caused all the bonks.

Obviously a 9600 baud P25 system can process those affiliations faster than a 3600 baud Smartzone, which should be online end of 2019. But training is still a major factor.


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[krokus]

This type of problem exemplifies why we have the NPSPAC assignments available. Then you are reliant on the wetware and physics, rather than technology that can be overloaded.

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[zz0468]

In a situation where there is major chaos, just hundreds of users jumping around to different talkgroups to try to "hear the action" can cave in a system. If you watch the affiliations there reaches a point where the control channel will studder a bit, then roll to the next one.

A control channel change can be pretty seamless, unless you happen to be the one trying to transmit at the moment it changes. But it doesn't create a visible problem to those just listening to a talk group. There's a second or so while all the radios reacquire the cc, and life goes on. What's worse is that a large number of simultaneous affiliations can cause a 6809 controller to do a watch dog reset. That will cause the system to revert to failsoft while the controller reboots. I don't know if an MTC3600 controller is prone to the same fault.

 

[DJ11DLN]

God forbid that anyone would have thought to use plain ol' Simplex. I listen to some of the local FD's using their various FG TG's and it is like a CB radio party...and I wonder when things are going to go boom, they don't seem to understand that a lot of other people are also trying to use that particular site, and that the resources they're soaking up do have limits.

Somebody on here had a sig line to the effect that interoperability was a state of mind rather than having so much to do with technology. I couldn't agree with that more and until training and tactics catch up with the technology, there are going to be snafu's like this no matter how good and up-to-date the systems are.

 

[APX8000]

http://www.trbas.com/media/media/acrobat/2018-12/70135058816260-12074125.pdf

Just released...Please keep the topic to the radio system which is discussed within. I’m going to no comment on everything else.


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[Gmork]

God forbid that anyone would have thought to use plain ol' Simplex.

Simplex was used by teams inside the school, however range was severely limited.