Allow me to address this situation to the best of my knowledge. To answer your question the Rogers County Sheriff released the tapes to the Northeast Oklahoma Enhance 911 Trust Authority along with the dispatch complaints. I do not know for sure if he or the TA released them to the media. It is most likely the sheriff did. There has been an ongoing acrimonious relationship between the RCS and the IPC. I have only been in the area for 4 years now so I don't know how far back it goes. It boils down to a culture clash. Inola is a town of about 1500. The chief has been here for some time and has a particular way of doing things that works for the department and the city. I have had a couple conversations with him in the last couple years. He is a very friendly fellow and will sit and talk with you for as long as you want. I am acquainted with the Sheriff but my conversations with him have been brief but cordial. I like both of them.
As to the issues over the radio situation. Inola dispatched the PD and FD out of the police station for many years. It worked very well. Never an issue to my knowledge. The chief runs a very laid back style of department. The RCSO a much more formal by the book operation naturally as it has many more officers and have procedures that need to be followed to maintain peak efficiency. Hence the culture clash. When Inola decided to join the OKWIN system, it was not a good mesh. The new procedure of 10-90 checks was something that did not happen with the Inola dispatchers and now having to do so it was an issue to the Chief. I have been told that one of the incidents that caused friction was when the IPC was on a call in the process of trying to talk down a person with a gun wanting to commit suicide. RC dispatch kept wanting to know his 90 status every 15 minutes. NOT a good time to keep being interrupted with radio traffic. If he ignored the radio they would call him on his cell. He reacted in a tense situation with communications that without knowing the situation make him look bad. The other was may have just been he was having a bad day and spouted off in an unprofessional manner.
The Sheriff thinks the Chief should be fired for lack of professionalism. The city is loyal to the Chief because after all he is content to stay in his job. Most small towns have a lot of turnover and it is difficult to find someone like him considering what the city can pay. One of the big issues the city has with the county it the city has a large turnover in officers. The city hires someone that usually has no prior LEO experience. The city then pays for them to go and get their CLEET certification. But whenever RCSO gets an opening they come and poach the Inola officers away and the town is on the hook to train another officer. There is a state law I have been told that if this happens within a certain time period, the county if required to reimburse the town. I was also told that the county drags their feet on these reimbursements. When the town inquires about the delays they get things like oh, we'll look into that and get back to you or the dog ate our checkbook. On a small town budget, this can be a real strain.
I believe the city should go back to doing their own dispatch. The Chief will be able to have a comm's system to his liking. There are also complaints from the FD. They say the coverage is really bad on the new system in this southern part of the county. It is an all volunteer department and many of them had purchased their own vhf radios so they could communicate as they were responding to calls. I don't know who if any of them can afford or are even allowed to have a trunked personal radio. They may only be in the official department vehicles. Since I obviously can't monitor the system now, it's a mystery. RCSO sitll dispatched the fire calls on the old vhf system to activate the pagers the vols have been carrying, but I hear no further communications after that. I assume it takes place on the 800 system after the dispatch. What I do not understand is the statement that if Inola leaves the WIN system they will loose their emergency 911 connection. That makes no sense to me. That would be very disconcerting to the citizens.
My apologies if this post put some of you to sleep.
