Commission reviews issues with police radio

As Broward County awaits its new emergency radio system, it is implementing quick fixes to keep the aging equipment from being overwhelmed as it was during the Parkland shooting.

“Right now there are no technological stopgap measures, so everything involves human activity,” said Tracy Jackson, Broward County’s regional emergency services and communications, in a presentation to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission.

Instead, the county is working on tightening system maintenance and asking police officers and first responders to follow standard radio practices and limit use of the 26-year-old system to “critical radio traffic only.”

“We’re entering a time where, unfortunately, tragedy is around the corner,” he said. “And we have to be prepared for that.”

The county’s new radio system is set to go in to service in the last quarter of 2019, he said.

“We are feverishly evaluating, investigating ways that we can expedite that,” he said.

During the Stoneman Douglas and Fort Lauderdale airport shootings, some law enforcement officers couldn’t communicate with each other or hear from dispatchers. Officers used hand signals and stayed in groups to share information.

During both mass shootings, the system went into a phase called “throttling,” in which usage becomes limited. Throttling, which the system is designed to do to keep from crashing, typically passes so quickly that it’s not noticed. But in these cases it caused significant problems for officers trying to communicate.

The county for years has tried to extend the life of its radio system, originally installed in 1992. In September 2015, the consulting firm Mission Critical Partners reviewed the county’s radios and said the overall system needed to be replaced. Much of its equipment was 15 years old, “past the end of typical replacement periods,” the report found.

Broward County commissioners in May 2017 approved $59.5 million to replace the system.

The new system will increase coverage, with 16 towers instead of the current 10, said Daniel Sanchez, state and local government sales vice president for Motorola. The capacity for simultaneous conversations will rise by 30 percent, he said, and its processing power by 300 percent.

The same system was in place in suburban Houston during the May 18 shooting at Santa Fe High School, he said, and it continued to function, never throttling.

Members of the commission, composed of law enforcement officers, public officials and parents of the murdered children, pressed Broward and Motorola officials on whether the new system could stand up to the sort of stress that overwhelmed the current one.

Jose De Zayas, the county’s radio system administrator, said the system will be able to handle larger spikes in users than the current system. And with fewer non-law enforcement radios accessing the system, it will have fewer users, making throttling less likely to occur.