Cape officials hear problems with fire, police radios firsthand

Members of the Cape Girardeau City Council got to hear firsthand Monday night some of the issues with the radios used by the city's public-safety officials.

Assistant fire chief Mark Hasheider and battalion fire chief Brad Dillow gave a brief demonstration to the council, discussing the current system and interest in an upgraded system.

Dillow radioed other stations that performed a quick test, counting down from five. One reply, coming from two blocks away, he said, was hampered by static.

But static isn't the only problem. Hasheider said one of the system's biggest shortfalls is unreliability, especially in communicating with police officers.

"If you can only hear one part of [the communication], it doesn't do you any good," he said. "A lot of the officers, we have them in certain locations where they can hear us, then the next night, they don't hear us. For their officers, for their safety, this is paramount."

Hasheider said radio interoperability has been an issue public-safety officers have discussed with the council many times over the years. Last summer, council members came to a consensus to use money from the casino-funded innovation fund to upgrade the system, although they did not hold a formal vote. Since that time, a committee of police and fire officials has worked to determine what system best would meet the city's needs.

An official recommendation was not made at the meeting, and the council did not vote on the issue. Hasheider said he expected a decision would be brought to the council in about two weeks.

Police and fire departments have made several efforts over the years to improve the system, but Hasheider said two events over the last five years have made it "imperative" the city look at a new radio system. One was the Federal Communications Commission's decision to narrow the band used by the city's public safety officials for radio and walkie-talkie communication.

Fire chief Rick Ennis equated the issue to condensing eight lanes of traffic to four lanes, but Hasheider said the problems go deeper.

"Right now, we're all on individual roads. We can't share the road," he said. "We all have to have our own individual roads for our frequencies, [police] and fire. There's no togetherness, and what we would like to go to is a highway that has four, eight lanes on it that we can share, meaning you're supporting one roadway, not a number of roads."

The plan being considered would include public works, parks and recreation and other city departments in the same system, as well as other county and state agencies.

The idea of a shared system goes back to a second significant event referenced by Hasheider. The state began a statewide wireless interoperable network several years ago that set up towers across the state -- including one in Cape Girardeau -- allowing several agencies to communicate within the same system and the same infrastructure.

Committee members still are determining whether the best move is to add to the state system or whether the city should add its own system that would "tie into the state system," Hasheider said. The decision is not a task to be taken lightly, he said.

"I think we've done our homework, we really have. And it wasn't done overnight," he said.

srinehart@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3641

Pertinent address:

401 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.