South Bend, IN - Officials vote on emergency communications system Tuesday

[daveriffel]

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — In a race against time, county officials are scrambling to reach an agreement with telecommunications giant Motorola on a multi-million-dollar contract to upgrade the county's emergency communications system.

St. Joe Co. considers new radio system

 

[b7spectra]

It's for the County, not the city from what I read. I guess South Bend is in St. Joseph county? Whatever the solution is, I hope everyone is on the same band - i.e. VHF, UHF, 800.

>&#8220;Snipers at one point in time, put other officers in the line of fire simply because they weren&#8217;t able to broadcast, &#8216;move out of the way, or move to the left or right,&#8217;&#8221; Lt. Croymans explained" someone could make the decision"<

Usually, the snipers are on a totally different channel than the beat officers. All the sniper is doing with the radio is waiting for one of two commands - "Stand Down" or "Take the perp out". They definitely don't want to listen to all the radio chatter and they for sure don't want to take their eyes off the target so they can change radio channels!

 

[daveriffel]

Well I will agree that it reads it's only for the county however, it is for the WHOLE county to integrate to 800MHZ digital so everyone can talk to everyone on a reliable system. Of course like every system it has it's flaws but this system is actually really well engineered, The only thing that gets me is that they play this whole thing off like the big "M" is the only company out there and that's not the case. They could have gone with Kenwood or Standard or Maycom and pay a ton less than what Motorola is charging them, but because Motorola is who the state contracted with that's who equipment you have to buy! That portion is ridiculous. The up side is that the State maintains the repeaters and the towers...that's a big expense that the County doesn't have to shoulder but it's still coming from the taxpayers.

I have used the Hoosier Safe-T system that the county is buying into it works well, In fact I was involved in the original stages of implementation for St. Joseph County and the system has actually gotten better, but Like I said before everything has it's flaws. Buying individual radios is expensive and accessories for those units are expensive and the tax payers of St. Joseph County have to pay for that stuff. This is all one big step into the government mandated centralized dispatch. Get the systems in place and working then put everyone together. And that has been a huge fight in St. Joe County for a great many years because EVERYONE wants to be in charge but NO ONE wants to pay for it!!!!! so that portion i will believe when I see!!!