New Jersey - A step toward better cop, fire radios

[Thunderbolt]

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- You could almost hear the cheering across North Jersey last week as police and fire officials voiced support for proposed federal legislation to buy them new radios and fulfill a post-9/11 mandate to unify their disjointed communications system.

A step toward better cop, fire radios - NorthJersey.com

 

[comsec1]

another NB myth

This just seems like someone has been using the narrrow banding deadline to push for new radios. There are enough common frequencies for any interoperability that might be needed in NJ. What is lacking are trained RADIO OPERATORS, Most dispatchers don't know that much about radios and for that matter neither do the politicians who push for things that are not needed.

 

[ScanXO]

...and an article in the same paper & a weekly paper a week or so later, has 6 or so towns in the Westwood area - who when offered by the county to share dispatch services would rather spent their own monies on a new building and inferstructure - tie lines, T1 lines etc When the county already has it. The Chiefs said the county is new - as if they just went into the radio business - when the county just revamp and added a new building in Mahwah from the older - remodeled Hackensack office. So the county doesnt know their officers was one the reasons !?
no body knows their history, the County did do it for them in the 1920-1960's; but ....never mind this is Bergen look at Somerset, Ocean, Morris counties how is it possible they can do it
the nonsense continues

 

[902]

...and an article in the same paper & a weekly paper a week or so later, has 6 or so towns in the Westwood area - who when offered by the county to share dispatch services would rather spent their own monies on a new building and inferstructure - tie lines, T1 lines etc When the county already has it. The Chiefs said the county is new - as if they just went into the radio business - when the county just revamp and added a new building in Mahwah from the older - remodeled Hackensack office. So the county doesnt know their officers was one the reasons !?
no body knows their history, the County did do it for them in the 1920-1960's; but ....never mind this is Bergen look at Somerset, Ocean, Morris counties how is it possible they can do it
the nonsense continues

When I began monitoring in the 70s, most of the East Bergen towns were STILL using "make an 88" and other Bergen County codes on their own frequencies. Clearly the influence had been there from the past decades. They also apparently forgot the countywide net on 37.38 and all of the Plectron receivers (that always broadcast elopements from the JINS shelter) that were the precursor to SPEN - and the subsequent County Alert system that installed Motorola monitor receivers in a supervisor's police car and control stations in all of the police departments in and around the county back in the early 80s. So, yeah, what does the county know? Chalk it up to local control.

The only bad thing I can see from a countywide solution in Bergen is that the competitive sales environment in the region would dry up as procurements would have to be approved by a system administrator, possibly sole-sourced because of various network requirements, and individual procurements by departments would decrease.

Mike Kelly has a key issue he begins on the bottom of the first page - CULTURE. You can throw all the money you want at technology and not solve anything, until you address cultural issues first. Everyone needs to be on the same team. Red guy, blue guy, green guy, brown guy, etc. You can't have one stadium (a common incident) with the red team (fire) playing football, the blue team (PD) playing baseball, etc. - or have them playing the same sport, but a different game in their own corner - all at the same time and not expect it to end up as a charlie foxtrot.