While we are on the topics of interoperability and Project SAFE-T, I recently heard a conversation on SAFE-T talkgroups that is all too familiar. (I'll use fictitious talkgroup names to convey the story without revealing the departments involved.)
A local fire department is dispatched to a vehicle fire on a major highway. The automated dispatch goes out over the VHF firehouse alerting system and over the FIRE-DISP talkgroup. Fire units arrive at the scene and report the situation back to Fire Dispatch on the FIRE-OPS talkgroup. A few minutes later, the incident commander hits Fire Dispatch again on FIRE-OPS to ask for law enforcement to be sent to the scene. A police dispatcher, who is sitting in the same room with the fire dispatcher, keys up on POLICE-DISP to tell a PD unit that a run has been sent to the unit's MDT. The police officer says his MDT isn't working and asks for the run by voice which the police dispatcher provides. A few minutes later, the fire incident commander keys up on FIRE-OPS and asks Fire Dispatch again about law enforcement. The Police Dispatcher keys up on POLICE-DISP asking the officer's whereabouts. Officer replies and then you hear the Fire Dispatcher keying up on FIRE-OPS with the officer's ETA.
All of this leaves me wondering just how much communications infrastructure are we tying up in an effort to put out a car fire and get the thing towed off the highway.
- Why do we have fire dispatches going out simultaneously over VHF and SAFE-T? Was SAFE-T ever intended to be a firehouse alerting system in an area where most of the vollies are still carrying VHF pagers?
- Why don't the MDTs work? Is it unreliable hardware, finicky software, or an overloaded wireless network?
- Why don't we have vehicle locating systems in the public safety vehicles so Dispatch will know where they are without having to tie up a voice talkgroup asking for a unit's location?
- Why can't police and fire units who are working the same run talk to each other directly? Is there some cardinal rule that would be broken if the fire incident commander was able to key up his radio and talk directly to the law enforcement unit en-route to the scene?
Seems like a lot of communications resources were expended on a simple task. And it also seems as if we are still applying the old ways of doing things even though we have modern technology available.
[soapbox mode=ON]
Granted, the politicians at the state level were convinced to buy off on SAFE-T with the promise that everybody could talk to each other and the promise that it could be the communications solution that local communities were looking for, but couldn't afford. Local politicians jumped at the chance to get access to the state's communications infrastructure without having to fund their own infrastructure. Now that we have public safety agencies all over the state
dependent on SAFE-T, the system manager says there's no room for additional radios and maybe no room for additional talkgroups. How much is it going to cost the taxpayers in the state to re-engineer and re-build the state's communications system because we didn't know then what we know now?
[soapbox mode=OFF]
