[Scan-DC] Gettysburg Borough PD radio system

[Alan Henney]

http://www.eveningsun.com/localnews/ci_6507199

Chief: G'burg radio failures unfounded
By MATT CASEY
Evening Sun Reporter
Evening Sun
Article Launched:07/31/2007 10:26:05 AM EDT

After years of complaints about the Gettysburg Borough Police
Department's radio system, Chief Joseph Dougherty said this week that
he's frustrated with public complaints because he can't find anything
wrong with the system.

Dougherty said he's "at wit's end to come up with any legitimate,
documented problems," with the radios since he took over the
department last October.

"I think there's more emotion attached to it than common sense," he
said of the oft-heard complaint that police often can't communicate on
the borough's aging radios.

A 2005 application for a grant to pay for new police radios said that
when officers checked in with Adams County 911 on a good day,
dispatchers told officers their signal was weak, but readable.

Most days, the application said, dispatchers said Gettysburg officers
were unreadable.

But last year, the borough had each officer's hand radios checked and
repaired, said Borough Manager John Lawver.

In his office last week, Dougherty opened a binder that contained
maintenance requests from officers. It contained 70 requests for work
on police vehicles filed this year, and only one request - dated
2006 - for work on department radios.

Dougherty said the radios are assigned to officers, making the
officers responsible for them the same way they are responsible for
their handguns.

Dougherty said he asks officers to document radio failures, including
where the officer was, and what they were doing when the radio failed.

He said he knows the equipment isn't state of the art, but he has
heard only two complaints about the radios since he took over as
chief.

An officer brought in one radio and said it didn't work, Dougherty
said, and the department sent it out for repairs.

The officer later admitted he had dropped the radio, Dougherty said.

Dougherty said in the second complaint, he and the officer determined
that the radio temporarily failed because the officer was standing
next to a large piece of electrical equipment at the time.

With only those complaints, Dougherty said, it's difficult to track
down the problem without documented incidents.

But at least one officer said he's given up on documenting problems.

Patrolman First Class Chris Folster said he's had problems with
Gettysburg's radio system for his entire 31/2 years at the department,
but he hasn't filed any complaints about them recently.

He said sometimes Adams County Control can't hear Gettysburg officers.
Other times, the officers can't hear each other, he said, and
sometimes you could place two radios next to each other, and one radio
will receive the message while the other one will not.

Folster said he filed "half a dozen" complaints when former chief Rolf
Garcia ran the department, but "documenting the same thing over and
over again is just a waste of paper."

Garcia, who resigned as chief last August after being placed on
administrative leave, called the radios a safety hazard for officers
at Bike Week last year.

The need for new radios became a public issue last year when it was
learned the borough went without them in order to pay for polygraph
training for a female police officer.

Officer Sharon Gelwicks had alleged to the state Human Relations
Commission she was discriminated against when she was earlier denied
the training.

The training last year was seen as an attempt to "remediate" any
alleged discrimination, but Gelwicks subsequently filed a
gender-discrimination lawsuit in federal court against the borough,
its mayor and a former police chief. That lawsuit is still pending.

It was also learned that as the officer in charge of the grant
application, she had ranked polygraph training as a higher priority
than new radios.

But now, the borough will soon have $25,000 to invest in a new system,
said Borough Finance Director Mona Overton.

She said Friday that she's waiting on the finalized contract for a
grant for the police radios from the Pennsylvania Department of
Community and Economic Development, and the contract could arrive at
any time.

Dougherty said he's trying to find the right solution for replacing
the department's radio equipment.

He said the borough commissioned a study to evaluate the reach of
radio systems in the borough that's now being refined, and he's had
multiple meetings about equipment - including one scheduled Monday
with Lower Allen Township in Cumberland County to look at equipment
they recently decommissioned that could be worth the borough buying.

"I'm looking at replacing the entire system ... but I want to make
sure it is an equipment problem," Dougherty said.

He said he doesn't know what else he can do. He has to rely on radio
experts, and has to bend to their schedules.

But his efforts aren't pleasing some on BoroughVENT.com, a Web site
that allows registered users to post and respond to complaints about
Gettysburg.

This month, an anonymous poster accused Dougherty of making excuses
and urged him to call Cumberland Township Police Chief Donald Boehs,
ask him where he bought the radios for his department, and buy them.

Dougherty said police radios aren't as simple as buying equipment from
Radio Shack and expecting it to work.

"I'm not going to do a haphazard, sloppy job with this just because
people think it should have been done months ago," he said.

One problem, he said, is geography.

Hills and buildings can block radio signals and create areas where
officers can't get calls out, Dougherty said.

Lawver compared the problem to cellular phones. Even in an area where
you have a strong signal, you can hit a dead spot and drop your call.

Folster said geography could be the problem, but his opinion was that
the radios were the problem.

He said he worked at two other police departments in his nine-year
career, and neither had the problems the borough's system has, but
Folster admitted he isn't a radio expert, and his previous departments
were in relatively flat areas.

Mary Bowers, deputy director of the Adams County Department of
Emergency Services, said the county's system is old and "yes, there
are dead spots," but she said there are few of them according to the
county's survey of its radio system. But she added the survey assumes
perfect conditions, including perfect weather.

The county commissioners are considering upgrading the department's
radio system, which is used by emergency responders across the county,
Bowers said. The commissioners recently took a step toward determining
the future of the system, by trying to find a consultant to study the
county's radio needs.

"We presently do not know where we're going," Bowers said.

Bowers said county officials are considering upgrading to a
higher-band system that would allow digital communications, and took
the step of buying a license to use the high-range bandwidth four
years ago.

This upgrade would allow Adams County Control to send data to officers
in the field, and let police talk directly to fire personnel, Bowers
said.

Bowers said police officers and firefighters have to talk to each
other through dispatchers under the existing system.

Lawver said the possible upgrade complicates his efforts because he
doesn't know what system the police department's radios will have to
communicate with in the near future, so he's trying to come up with a
solution that covers all possibilities.

In the meantime, the police department is working with what it has.

Lawver said many of the radios repaired last year had dead batteries
or broken antennae, or they had drifted off the department's
frequency. He said radios lose range when they drift off frequency.

Folster said the equipment improved after the repairs, but said it
wasn't "a drastic improvement."

Contact Matt Casey at mcasey at eveningsun.com.



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