FAYETTEVILLE : Agencies linked by new radios
Posted on Monday, December 15, 2008
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BOB COLEMAN Joseph Smith, a public safety dispatcher with the University of Arkansas Police Department, works at one of the new work stations at the department. The new system went into service in August.
FAYETTEVILLE - Before this fall, officers with the University of Arkansas Police Department communicated with one another using a 1970s-era two-way radio system.
The radios couldn't transmit to the radios used by other nearby law enforcement agencies. Nor could UAPD officers communicate directly with university agencies such as transit, housing and athletics.
Over the years, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find parts to fix things when the old system needed repairs, said Lt. Gary Crain, spokesman for University Police.
"About 10 years ago, we started a discussion about the department's radio system," he said. "In 1998, it was already about 20 years old."
It still took a few years, but by late 2004 or so, UAPD administrators got serious about researching the best possible communications system. They ultimately expanded the scope to include the other university agencies, should they choose to buy their own radios to tie onto the system, and decided on a "trunk system."
Some funding from the university was cobbled together, a 150-foot tower went up near the campus police building, and the $1.3 million communications system went live in August.
Now, all patrol officers have radios in their cars, whereas before sergeants and supervisors had them, said Stephen Gahagans, director of University Police. Foot, bike and Segway patrols carry the new hand-held radios.
UAPD's 911 is integrated into the communications system.
As dispatcher Joseph Smith worked in the new command center Thursday morning, he was able to monitor more than a half-dozen computer screens.
The screens displayed everything from 911 traffic to campus building maps, alarm systems to computer-aided dispatching, the Arkansas Crime Information Center, and the new radio communications system itself.
"The data system is really easy to work with," said Smith, who monitors emergency and non-emergency calls with a headset wired to an extra control button resting below the hip.
He can use the control button when relaying a message from a 911 caller to a police officer so that both the caller and the officer hear only the dispatcher's voice.
The previous system offered only two options for 911 dispatching: an old-fashioned phone handset, perched on a vertical receiver on the side of the console, or a microphone on the console that allowed a conference-call style conversation.
The new system has a more extensive archive of past radio traffic and 911 calls, Smith said, allowing him to go further back in time. He can select a call for playback simply by selecting it on the computer monitor.
The $1.3 million cost covered the base equipment, consoles and radios for UAPD, Crain said.
Don Pederson, the Fayetteville campus's finance chief, said his office put together the funding a few years ago using year-end balances from several fiscal years. He said the money came mostly from tuition and state appropriation revenues.
Crain added that outside agencies were responsible for buying their own radios. He likened the communication system's base equipment "repeater" to a broadband router in that others with radios can use it.
The new system came in handy earlier this year as Crain was working a Razorbacks football game.
A fan asked Crain when the next shuttle bus would arrive, and he was able to radio the driver directly to get his arrival time.
Before, the communication would have occurred as a network relay.
"They would have radioed their dispatcher," said UA's transit and parking director, Gary Smith, referring to UAPD. "Their dispatcher would have called our dispatcher. Our dispatcher would have called the bus. Then they would have been relayed back through."
The same direct line allows bus drivers to contact University Police "if there's an incident," rather than having to relay through the layer of dispatchers, Smith said.
Conceivably, if UAPD were tracking a suspect, other campus departments could report a sighting more quickly, Crain and Smith said, though that hasn't happened to date.
Other campus offices that can use the radio system include housing, student affairs, athletics, the student union workers and Facilities Management.
Before the new radio system, special events were a challenge for Smith's department, Smith said. Transit and parking employees - 14 bus drivers and 10 parking enforcers - shared one radio frequency.
"Now, each group has their own frequency they can work on, and then when we need to we can all come together and work campuswide," Smith said.
For instance, transit workers now have their own frequency, as do parking workers. During a ball game, each agency has assigned channels, but all the agencies can listen to the others' channels and, if needed, all switch to one channel, Smith said.
The public safety band for UAPD is 400 megahertz, said Sgt. Greg Foster, a public safety supervisor.
UAPD uses an uplink box to talk to agencies on the 800 megahertz band, including the Fayetteville Police Department and Arkansas State Police, Crain said. If needed, university officers could link to agencies statewide.
Under the antiquated radio system, UAPD communicated on the 100 megahertz band, he said.
Foster offered an analogy to explain the way the trunk system assigns individual channels.
"The best way to describe it is, it's like a giant wheel that spins," he said. Someone speaking on a radio gets the first open slot that comes around, and likely will get a different open slot for a subsequent communication.
A lot of other things have changed since the previous call system's early days.
"I started as a dispatcher here in [1985]," Foster said. "We had one phone line coming in and a single radio frequency."
The dispatchers used a phone bank with a handset and eight or nine buttons you could press to put callers on hold, he said.
Other safety equipment investments for UAPD have included three tornado sirens installed in March 2002 at an initial cost of $110,000.
The sirens were placed atop the student union, on Cato Springs Road near several UA research facilities south of campus, and at the UA agricultural experiment station near Knapp and Hatch streets.
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