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High-tech innovations hampering police calls
Jack Leonard

11/09/2000
The Dallas Morning News
3A
Copyright 2000 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2000 The Dallas Morning News, L.P.

The police radio used to be the ultimate piece of squad-car technology, as dependable to a cop in a jam as the trusty black-and-white cruiser itself.

But that was before sprawling office towers and parking structures started blocking radio waves. And before wireless phones - with their crystal clear reception - increased expectations for two-way communication, while at the same time stealing frequencies from radio users.

Now, it seems, in this era of technological innovation, the crackling police radio is starting to show its age.

Police and fire agencies across the country are using antiquated equipment developed in the 1950s and '60s that has failed in major emergencies.

That problem is prompting departments to spend hundreds of millions on cutting-edge radio networks, only to encounter many new - and sometimes dangerous - breakdowns.

In one extreme case in Atlanta, a new police radio network failed to pick up an officer's call for help just moments before a rifle-wielding suspect wounded her and killed her partner. In Delaware, firefighters resorted to shouting out of windows because their $50 million communications system didn't work inside high-rise buildings.

In Los Angeles, police use a 21-year-old network so out of date that manufacturers have stopped making parts for it. For years, cash-strapped technicians had to cannibalize parts from some hand-held radios to fix others. The problems reached a crisis during the 1992 riots, when officers in the field faced a critical shortage of portable radios.

The city is installing a new system.

Orange County, Calif., began rolling out an $80 million network this year and experienced its own static - including several incidents that police say put their safety at risk. This summer, officers complained that new radios failed to pick up critical information from dispatchers during a building search for a murder suspect.

"I think we've gone backward instead of forward," said Irvine, Calif., police Officer Jeff van der Sluys Veer. Some of his colleagues now rely on their own cellular phones and pagers, he said, "anything they can to maintain communications."

The problem is part physics and part finances.

The design of police radio systems makes it difficult for signals to penetrate the heavy steel and concrete of office buildings, parking garages, shopping malls and hospitals. As these structures sprout, they present major obstacles for officers trying to keep in touch with each other.

Wireless phones also operate via radio waves, but engineering experts say they often provide far better service than police radios because the telephone companies place more radio towers in highly developed areas. Local governments simply don't have the money to match that kind of coverage - even with state-of-the-art systems.

"Our society has become such a technological monster that ... public safety has just been overshadowed," said Alan Burton, an Oregon-based consultant on emergency communications.

Police and fire departments were once leaders in communications technology. In the 1920s, Detroit police unveiled the country's first one-way car radio. The development was quickly followed by two-way police radios. And soon, officers came to view their radios as an indispensable part of their crime-fighting arsenal.

Until the early 1990s, most police radios operated at frequencies that were 400 megahertz or less - the same frequencies used by the burgeoning wireless communications industry. The explosion of cell phones and other technology sparked a modern-day "land rush" for radio frequencies.

Police and fire departments found themselves without space to add radio channels even though their populations - and emergency call volumes - were rising. As calls flooded dispatch centers, officers had to wait in line to make a call - often delaying response times by crucial minutes.

The biggest complaint is that the radios don't always work in many big structures and throughout entire patrol districts. Experts point out that radio waves on higher frequencies can't travel as far as those on the low frequencies previously used. To compensate, public safety agencies must add radio towers, which is often cost prohibitive.

Additionally, the technology is vulnerable to interference from wireless phone transmissions. Technicians have discovered that some cellular phone sites reduce police radios to static.

"Dead spots" are reported elsewhere, including Portland, Ore., where a new 800-megahertz radio network was touted as state-of-the-art technology when it was installed in 1994.

In July, the Oregon OSHA fined the city $3,600 after determining that the radio system was already overtaxed and that failures sometimes prevent police officers from calling for help.

"Officers are disgusted," said Sgt. Lonn C. Sweeney.