allscan said:
An article in today's Cecil Whig about the new system mentioned that all fire and EMS calls will be simulcast on 155.5275 and all police calls on 39.84 (state police).
http://www.cecilwhig.com/articles/2006/08/23/news/01.txt
CALLING ALL CARS
County’s new radio system installed
The installation of the county’s $9 million emergency services radio system is complete and is expected to be in use by the end of the month, officials said.
Mike Browne, deputy director of emergency services, said the new system would allow the various emergency agencies police, fire and EMS to talk with one another. The money to pay for the new system came from the county government’s Capital Improvement Program, which is made up of bonds and the general fund.
Browne said all the county emergency agencies will switch to the new radio system next Wednesday. Some agencies are already using the new system but cannot talk to other agencies until the switch is made.
He said with the old system, emergency personnel talked to their dispatcher who then called the dispatcher for the agency with which the original caller needed to communicate. That dispatcher would then relay the original message to the appropriate emergency personnel. Any responses would require the same three-step process in reverse.
Emergency officials had to transmit all messages through dispatchers if one agency was working with another, Browne said.
Firefighters could not talk to a police officer or vice versa. Police officers could not talk to their brethren in other agencies.
He said the old system led to considerable delays when one agency needed to respond to another.
“The whole purpose (of the new system) is to be more efficient,” Browne said.
The new system allows all emergency agencies to hear emergency broadcasts, meaning a closer agency can respond, cutting down on the response time, he said. In the past, if one agency were a block away from an emergency, there was a good chance that agency never knew what was happening.
Under the new system, the sheriff’s office, state police and Elkton police will dispatch all police emergencies. The sheriff’s office will dispatch all municipal police agencies. The Department of Emergency Services will dispatch all fire and EMS emergencies.
With the exception of Elkton, residents who call 911 or their local police department after hours will now have the calls directed to the Cecil County Sheriff’s Office. The Elkton Police Department has a 24-hour dispatch center and will dispatch their officers to emergencies within town limits.
Before, dispatchers asked the caller which agency they wanted. Sometimes, the dispatcher and the caller did not know which agency was closer and the caller would have to wait if the agency they chose was busy or farther away.
The new system uses nine frequencies on a computer system, which increases the number of people who can make calls at one time, Browne said. An officer is assigned a frequency and the computer identifies the officer and all the other officers in the group. A talk group is one of 14 designated channels in which emergency personnel can communicate without interruption from dispatch calls.
An officer’s radio will also tell other officers who made the call. The new system has the ability to track 1.2 million groups but the county will use far fewer.
The radio system covers 97 percent of the county and has an alert system that notifies emergency personnel if they are in an area without coverage.
He said all police radios are programmed exactly the same and all the EMS and fire radios are programmed exactly the same. Users need only to turn a knob on their radio to the talk group in use.
The talk groups free up dispatchers and allow emergency personnel to talk uninterrupted to each other, Browne said.
Encryption was also built into the radio system so the Drug Task Force and the Special Response Team can talk without others listening in. The chiefs of police, the sheriff and the Maryland State Police North East Barrack commander also have an encrypted talk group.
The system has a security feature that allows the software to be destroyed if the radio is lost or stolen, Browne said. A radio with destroyed software can be sent to the manufacturer for reprogramming.
Once the switch is made to the new system, police emergencies will be rebroadcast over the old radio system through Maryland State Police.
Re-broadcasting police emergencies on the old system allows other state troopers traveling in the county to hear emergencies when they are in Cecil County.
What does this mean for residents and the police agencies?
*Police, fire and EMS emergencies will still be heard on scanners that worked with the old system.
*Fire and EMS emergencies can be heard on the paging frequency 155.5275.
*Police emergencies can be heard on the Maryland State Police frequency 39.84.
