Does anyone have the freq for this new SB County "red" channel ?
SHARING RADIOS
10:00 PM PDT on Saturday, August 19, 2006
by: CASSIE MACDUFF
More than 300 firefighters died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in part because their radios couldn't pick up police channels that could have warned them the World Trade Center towers were about to fall.
The inability of the departments to communicate was one of first shortcomings identified in the post-9/11 analysis.
Yet when the 9/11 Commission issued its final report in December 2005, it gave the nation an F for efforts to fix the problem. It blasted some agencies for spending Homeland Security money on armored vests for police dogs and air conditioning for garbage trucks instead.
Fortunately, police agencies in San Bernardino County are more forward-thinking. They pooled their federal funding to build a radio system connecting the Sheriff's Department, Highway Patrol and every police agency in the valley.
The price tag is more than $4 million. And it took five years of planning and applying for the funds. But the radio equipment installation should be complete within the next few months, said Frank Scialdone, who was Fontana's police chief during the planning.
Sheriff Gary Penrod credits the San Bernardino County Police Chiefs and Sheriff Association, which meets monthly, for the cooperation that got the agencies to see beyond their jurisdictional boundaries to the big picture.
Sheriff's Capt. Paul Cappitelli was given the task of creating communications "interoperability" (the buzzword for "being able to talk to each other"), because he knew about Orange County's Red Channel, where agencies have been able to broadcast critical alerts to each other for 30 years.
The chiefs and sheriff group first discussed a Red Channel in 2000, Cappitelli said, but there was no money to build it.
After 9/11, Homeland Security funding was allocated to police, fire and public-health agencies throughout the U.S. But few are willing to share their grants.
It took some persuading to get the local police chiefs to pool their funds. The man who did it, Scialdone said, was Redlands Chief Jim Bueermann.
Police agencies used to be able to communicate with each other -- until most converted their radio systems to 800 MHz, Bueermann said.
Today they can listen to each other's frequencies, but can't broadcast to each other. All communication must go through dispatch centers, wasting precious time -- sometimes as much as 20 minutes, Bueermann said. By then, suspects can be long gone, and people needlessly endangered.
With the old system, for example, an officer might stop a car for speeding and not know the suspects are fleeing a crime that happened moments earlier, putting his or her life in danger, Bueermann said.
With the new system, the moment an officer has a description of a suspect's car, he or she can broadcast it to every other patrol car in the region.
Re-creating the ability to talk back and forth required building a "backbone" system and installing separate radios in each agency's vehicles in addition to their agencies' radios.
It took the local agencies three years to save up the $3.6 million in Homeland Security funds to cover most of the cost.
It's an impressive display of agencies working together for the greater good.
SHARING RADIOS
10:00 PM PDT on Saturday, August 19, 2006
by: CASSIE MACDUFF
More than 300 firefighters died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in part because their radios couldn't pick up police channels that could have warned them the World Trade Center towers were about to fall.
The inability of the departments to communicate was one of first shortcomings identified in the post-9/11 analysis.
Yet when the 9/11 Commission issued its final report in December 2005, it gave the nation an F for efforts to fix the problem. It blasted some agencies for spending Homeland Security money on armored vests for police dogs and air conditioning for garbage trucks instead.
Fortunately, police agencies in San Bernardino County are more forward-thinking. They pooled their federal funding to build a radio system connecting the Sheriff's Department, Highway Patrol and every police agency in the valley.
The price tag is more than $4 million. And it took five years of planning and applying for the funds. But the radio equipment installation should be complete within the next few months, said Frank Scialdone, who was Fontana's police chief during the planning.
Sheriff Gary Penrod credits the San Bernardino County Police Chiefs and Sheriff Association, which meets monthly, for the cooperation that got the agencies to see beyond their jurisdictional boundaries to the big picture.
Sheriff's Capt. Paul Cappitelli was given the task of creating communications "interoperability" (the buzzword for "being able to talk to each other"), because he knew about Orange County's Red Channel, where agencies have been able to broadcast critical alerts to each other for 30 years.
The chiefs and sheriff group first discussed a Red Channel in 2000, Cappitelli said, but there was no money to build it.
After 9/11, Homeland Security funding was allocated to police, fire and public-health agencies throughout the U.S. But few are willing to share their grants.
It took some persuading to get the local police chiefs to pool their funds. The man who did it, Scialdone said, was Redlands Chief Jim Bueermann.
Police agencies used to be able to communicate with each other -- until most converted their radio systems to 800 MHz, Bueermann said.
Today they can listen to each other's frequencies, but can't broadcast to each other. All communication must go through dispatch centers, wasting precious time -- sometimes as much as 20 minutes, Bueermann said. By then, suspects can be long gone, and people needlessly endangered.
With the old system, for example, an officer might stop a car for speeding and not know the suspects are fleeing a crime that happened moments earlier, putting his or her life in danger, Bueermann said.
With the new system, the moment an officer has a description of a suspect's car, he or she can broadcast it to every other patrol car in the region.
Re-creating the ability to talk back and forth required building a "backbone" system and installing separate radios in each agency's vehicles in addition to their agencies' radios.
It took the local agencies three years to save up the $3.6 million in Homeland Security funds to cover most of the cost.
It's an impressive display of agencies working together for the greater good.