By Wendy Giroux
The radios in Mercer Island patrol cars sometimes stop working at unpredictable times, leaving officers unable to communicate while out on a call.
To fix the situation, the City Council recently approved the purchase of six new 800 MHz radios for a total of $24,246.
“The radio is absolutely crucial in our line of work. For officer safety reasons, we have to be able to talk to one another — that’s how we get help dispatched to us,” Sgt. Lance Davenport said.
“If my radio is not functioning and I can’t count on it, that really raises the apprehension in me being able to do my job properly,” Davenport added. “The radio is by far, bar none, the most important advancement in police work in a century.”
The new radios will be installed in six new police vehicles that are expected to arrive in March or April. The five new Ford Crown Victorias and one new Chevrolet Tahoe will replace vehicles currently in use; it’s the department’s standing policy to replace vehicles on a regular schedule. One big difference between the old vehicles and the new is that they will be blue instead of white.
The failing radios are built-in 800 MHz mobile radios that have been in use since 1995.
“The electronics in them were outright unreliable and breaking,” Davenport said.
Problems seem to stem from extreme temperatures, particularly when it is cold outside and the trunk of the car where the mobile unit is stored heats up and cools down multiple times. Those temperature changes caused the units to crack.
“You would key the mic to transmit and would get only a busy signal and then you would know. … They had been repaired over and over,” he said.
Other police and fire departments with the same model of radios experienced similar problems and also replaced them.
Public Safety Director Ron Elsoe wrote in a memo to the council that the breakdowns cause “An unacceptable situation with undependable communications and long out-of-service times for patrol vehicles.”
The city started putting money away in 1998 into a reserve account so that replacement radios could be bought when the original units wore out. A total of $12,758 has been accumulated in that account; $34,800 was saved in a separate account toward replacing the console dispatchers used. However, Mercer Island recently began contracting out its dispatch services to other cities, so that console will not be needed. Council members approved spending the remaining $11,488 out of the dispatch account to cover the cost of the new radios.
In addition to the replacement radios, the new patrol cars will be outfitted with computers that will allow officers to instantly check license plate numbers, drivers’ records and other data on their own, rather than asking dispatchers to do it for them as they do under the current system.
