Why Doesn't Sacramento P.D. Patch Channels?

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mcjones2013

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I'm curious, in case anyone on here is "in the know". When Sacramento P.D. goes from 4-channel to 3-channel to 2-channel dispatch operations in the evening/overnight hours, why do they not just patch the channels (talkgroups) together? Instead, they have all units on the closed channel(s) switch to a different channel.

For example, when three or four-channel operations, SPD District 3 (Downtown) will be on SP 3 (Channel 3). During the overnight hours, SP 3 will shut down, and all officers switch their radios over to SP 1 (Channel 1) and check-in with the SP 1 dispatcher.

If an officer talks on a "closed" channel, it's monitored by a dispatcher but the officer is told to go over to the open channel for that area.

It seems like it would be easier to do what Sacramento County S.O. does and just patch the channels together. For example, during overnight hours, Sacramento County S.O. will patch SD 1 (Dispatch 1) and SD 2 (Dispatch 2) together for districts north of the river, and SD 3 (Dispatch 3) and SD 4 (Dispatch 4) for districts south of the river. They actually used to patch all four dispatch channels together around 3 AM until later in the early morning hours.
 

norcalscan

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Would a patch take up additional resources on a site? If an officer is affiliated on a site with SP1, and another affiliated on the same site but on SP2, would that take up two voice channels when active? Or would the controller and subscriber units be smart enough to know the patch was in place and the system tell the subscriber units on any TG patched to go to this one channel as needed?
 

mcjones2013

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When they're patched, they only take up one voice channel per site. Whether the officer has his radio on SP 1, or on SP 2, the voice traffic would be the same and the radio would know what frequency to go to. To the field-user, it's all invisible, other than they would be hearing officers from a different district now talking on their channel. Sheriff dispatchers take care of this by announcing when they are patching and unpatching specific channels together.
 

InteropCop

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Yes. Because Norcalscan and Outerdog’s answers combined. Sac PD does not have dynamic regrouping set up, because “why change” so it does use channel resources if they do a console patch. And they have practiced this method for YEARS even back in the days of UHF Conventional. :)
 
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