Oregon police agencies work to share radio systems

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Thunderbolt

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mikepdx

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Eugene Police has provided its own police radios to Oregon State Police as part of their partnership.
It is a separate radio though, and not ideal when it comes to being able to notify others quickly

Not ideal?
Why not?
 

jim202

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If I can read between the normal reporter errors in obtaining the facts and what was said, going narrow band will not solve the communications problems.

The only way you can have multiple agencies on different bands able to communicate with each other is through patches on a console or using a radio interoperability gateway. Virginia saw this problem a number of years ago and chose to install radio interoperability gateways at many of the county 911 dispatch centers to resolve the problem. They now have a common IP network that currently links some 130 or so radio gateways together. These gateways are installed in the state and county 911 dispatch centers and are connected to the local radio channels commonly used. The dispatcher only needs to put their local channel into the gateway and connect with the other agency needed and connect to their radio channel. Now both agencies can talk car to car without having to rely on the dispatchers relaying messages that can get mangled in their context between the different dispatchers.

If anyone is interested in the details, they can do a search on the Internet for the "Virginia Comlinc Project" and you will find a number of related sites with information.
 

mm

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Even after narrowbanding, OSP will still be on their old VHF high system but they will at least have P25 capability.

Eugene will still be on their 800 MHz P25 system and the biggest roadblock is the typical government methodology these days where governments turn the system control over to an IT manager instead of a real radio engineer.

OSP is presently installing Harris Unity multiband radios in the patrol cars but the state is broke just like everyone else and the changeover is going to take time.

I have heard some districts testing the P25 up here in Salem but the change will probably take anothe 9 months if not longer to switch over.


There are still other cities like Springfield, that even if this was the year 2013 or 2014, even then OSP still wouldn't be able to talk with them simply because Springfield uses full time encryption on all talkgroups and we all know how easy it is dealing with IT managers who are placed in charge of radio systems.

Heck even some of the RF people in charge of systems are so territorial that my confidence of interoperability is still in the low 20% range.


Mike
 

OregonScanner

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The main thing is that not all troopers have the county radios. Just the other day I heard a trooper ask another "Do you have your County radio on & did you hear what County is going code to?" I've also troopers talking to each other about traffic heard on EPD & SPD's TGIDs.

The main reason OSP wasn't able to reach EPD before the pursuit was over was the pursuit was only 43 seconds long.

LCSO has the ability to talk on VHF...unknown if they have 2 radios or dual-band...but I've heard LCSO on OSP Florence just yesterday.
 

JoeyC

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I'm not seeing the relationship of the primary story to the interoperability story or why interop was even brought up.

I read that one agency attempted a traffic stop and the driver sped off causing a fatal collision 43 seconds later. Having all police agencies on the same page radio-wise would have prevented this? I think not.
 

tmundal

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I can't speak for Eugene area...but up in the Salem area I know that many PD and SO officers have scanners in there vehicles. I know MCSO monitors Salem PD, OSP and Linn SO in the area.

But like has been said...the whole thing took less than a minute. The EPD officer at the intersection MIGHT have been able to hear what was going on, and responded somehow...but that would be pretty quick thinking on his part.
 

Gezelle007

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Waking this up.

I agree, there's no way having a combined radio system would have prevented something that happened so fast. I think having a scanner, or having an additional radio is much better. However, I do not agree with installing one multi-band radio in their cars and taking all of the other ones out. That kind of defeats the purpose. How would a trooper know when to switch channels without being first told to by dispatch? If he didn't see a car rolling Code to something, he wouldn't know..

In Washington County, some Troopers carry 800 portables in addition to their own radios. In the city of Newberg and Dundee, most officers have UHF radios for the county in their car in addition to their 800 radios.. a K9 there even carries a UHF portable in addition to his 800 portable.

While having a scanner is just as good as another radio, having a scan feature on a multi-band radio could be even more dangerous. If they were listening to something else instead of their own, they could miss something urgent regarding a fellow Trooper, Deputy or Officer.

I think they should completely get rid of encryption, because its unnecessary, if you have to say something that important, use a phone. And have 2 multi-band radios in the car, or 1 multi-band and 1 scanner, or one single-band, and 1 scanner. Seems to me like no one thought of that before spending a bunch of money..
 
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