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GCN Home > 11/04/02 issue

Despite kinks, digital radio supported investigation

By Vandana Sinha, GCN Staff

Last month’s Washington-area sniper shootings forced Montgomery County, Md., police into an early launch of a digital, high-frequency radio system that took eight years and $130 million to build.

The police had dozens of still-wrapped Mot
Image: Olivier Doulier
orola Inc. digital radios that they handed out to members of an investigative task force, which seemed to add a new jurisdiction almost daily.

In the end, catching the sniper suspects took the full-time efforts of an unprecedented number of law en
Image: Olivier Doulier
forcement officials from a half-dozen counties and cities, two states, the District of Columbia and four federal agencies. They kept in touch over a radio system undergoing a prime-time stress test a month before its planned launch.

There were plenty of communications glitches, both human and technical.

Police radio interoperability, a pillar of homeland security efforts, was not yet solid enough to connect federal, state and local officials seamlessly. As Montgomery County’s radio systems manager said, it was “interoperability by the seat of our pants.”

Different bands

Maryland state police worked over a low-band frequency. Virginia state and Prince George’s County, Md., police were on higher bands. Montgomery County and about a dozen other jurisdictions around the state had converted to an 800-MHz digital system. Washington police were on a high band but planning to move to 800 MHz. And federal investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, FBI, and Marshals and Secret services operated on their own bands, inaccessible to state and local authorities.

“The [new digital] radio system gave us a tool to unite the investigation,” said Sgt. Bruce Blair, Montgomery County police radio systems manager. “I wouldn’t say it was key, by any stretch of the imagination. But it certainly supported the whole operation.”

In July last year, Montgomery County had begun fitting patrol cars with digital radio consoles and mobile computer docking stations. Two months later, the department was training SWAT teams, K-9 officers and special operations investigators to use the digital equipment.

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