Radio repairs a work in progress
Aging hardware, buggy software continue to challenge public safety
Last week, two Kokomo fire engines from different stations responded to an active fire. One radioed to the other that it was “catching” a fire hydrant. That radio traffic was never received. As a result, the second engine also hooked up to a hydrant on the other end of the block.
According to Firefighters Local 396 president Dan Guffey, a serious problem could have arisen from the lost communication. It didn’t that time.
“When someone presses the button, they assume they are talking to somebody,” said Guffey. “We just can’t have a situation like that.”
The problem, according to Howard County Sheriff Jerry Asher, involves a pre-emption protocol written into the radio software that gives emergency dispatchers priority over all other radio traffic.
“If they key up the radio, they cut everybody else out,” said Asher. “You would think that dispatch has the most pertinent safety information, so you want to be able to kick everything else out. But if you are a patrol officer on a scene, and you want to radio, ‘Hey, there’s a gun,’ who should have the pre-emption? In that case, I would want the patrol officer to be able to communicate.”
The pre-emption problem is just one in a long line of bugs, failures, and breakdowns that first responders in Howard County have suffered through with the emergency radio system for the past five years. At times, that causes frustrations to run high. At others, public safety is put at risk. But solutions are being developed, even as recently as this week.
“(On Jan. 27) they put new software in, along with a new piece of hardware, to help with the pre-emption issue,” said Asher. “That caused a little grief. Anytime you adjust the system, it doesn’t always go well. They added to a channel to get rid of the pre-emption, but for some reason the radio volumes were all over the place. It took four hours to adjust the volumes to where they should be.”
That software was installed only on the channel serving the Kokomo Police Department, according to Sheriff’s Captain Jordan Buckley, who oversees radio issues for his department. The reason the fix was limited in scope is two-fold, he explained.
First, if the fix creates new problems, they are limited to one area. Second, KPD logged nearly 1 million “push to talks” in the past six months. With that enormous amount of traffic, any potential problems should be identified much more quickly.
Pre-emption is just the latest difficulty facing the radio system. Last November, Buckley said, a set of circumstances which still aren’t fully understood caused a police officer to key up his radio and begin talking … to nobody. The traffic didn’t go through.
A software patch was released and installed right away which rectified the problem, but the patch was untested – a piece of beta software. Buckley said the patch worked for about 30 days.
“We were willing to accept the risk of a new problem arising, because the problem we were having was too big to ignore for 90 days,” said Buckley. “And a new problem did come up. If a dispatcher double-clicks the mouse to key up, or if two users push to talk at the exact same time, it can cause the channel to lock up for five seconds. It has only happened a handful of times, but (radio provider) EF Johnson identified it quickly. We are now waiting for that patch to come out.”
It is the speed of identification and response that may be the biggest improvement to the radio system over the past year. Because of the volume of problems and complaints about the radios that weren’t being reported to someone who could actually do something about them, the sheriff – along with every agency involved with the radio system, contractor J&K Communications, and EF Johnson – formed an active troubleshooting committee and a formal reporting process.
“We have an email distribution list and an actual form that a user who experiences a problem fills out and sends it to the email list,” said Asher. “It goes to 40 different people. It helps us figure out the problem and find a fix for it.”
Buckley has been pleased with the results of the new procedures and the committee.
“A lot of things have changed since we implemented a reporting procedure,” said Buckley. “Before, when we had radio problems, people would complain but not report it in an official capacity. We changed that last June. Now we can see repeating problems and address them. We meet weekly or bi-weekly in a radio committee of 20 people, all the way up to the CEO of EF Johnson.”
Buckley explained that the reporting system helped identify several major hardware problems – a symptom of an aging radio system. Coaxial cables were replaced on antennas. An entire antenna tower had to be replaced. Fixing these hardware problems caused a lot of secondary problems to be resolved.
“The hardware was breaking down because of age; it is five years old,” said Buckley. “It is out there in the elements. Once we handled the hardware problems, we began focusing on the software problems. This is a computer system, not a radio system. These Phase 2 handheld ‘radios’ are actually computers talking to other computers. It’s all digital, encoded and decoded on each side.”
The software, of course, is still a work in progress, as is the entire radio system. Asher said he isn’t certain the work to improve the radio system will ever end.
“This is still an ongoing process,” said Asher. “We take it very seriously, and I am not saying the radios are fixed. We are working with our contractor. I would love to say it would be perfect in six months; I cannot say that.
“We will work continually on the system. It is not fixed. It is a process with everyone involved. We are all working together to make the system as good as it can be. I wish I could say it was perfect, but if there is a perfect system out there, I’ve never heard of it. We want the best system we can have for the citizens of Howard County.”
No problems with Active Alert system
Recent concerns were circulated around social media about the Active Alert, or Active 911, system utilized by the Kokomo Fire Department. Allegations of text messages not being received caused some to question whether problems were arising with the system.
According to Adam Shaffer, vice president of Fire Fighters Local 396 and a specialist in dealing with the Active Alert system, there are no problems to be found.
“We have had no issues with Active 911 that I am aware of,” said Shaffer. “In the three or four years that we’ve had the system, I am aware of just one month when the system was down. As of right now, it is working 100 percent.”
Shaffer explained that Active Alert runs in the background of the Howard County Dispatch Center’s computer system. When a dispatcher logs in a call for service, the software automatically sends a text message to the appropriate first responders.
On top of that, the program maps out routes for emergency responders and enables dispatchers to relay additional information that doesn’t need to be broadcast through the radio system.
It is important to note that the Active Alert system does not interface with the emergency radio system. It is a separate system that is not maintained by the dispatch center.
The sheriff didn’t say that
Sheriff Jerry Asher wants to clear the air about what he said or didn’t say about the radio system. A press release he sent on Nov. 11 was misrepresented, he claims, to make it seem as if he gave the radio system a clean bill of health.
“One of the things people have been upset with me about is the press release,” said Asher. “(Another publication) ran a headline on an article about it, stating I said the radios are fixed. I’ve read the release over and over and can’t find where I said anything like that.
“Unfortunately, that coverage made people think I said that. But nowhere in the press release does it state that. It makes it difficult because people continue to reference that claim.”
Asher said the closest statement made in the release that could be construed or misconstrued as a claim of fixed radios is, “We have taken this issue seriously, addressed many of the concerns with some of the above noted repairs. We are hopeful that this new software update will take care of the most consistent issue that has arisen in the last several months.”
The full press release is attached below.