Musings from the Middle Fork: Police Communications Have Come a Long Way, But Will Never be Perfect

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In 1975 when I was hired by the sheriff’s office, the radio equipment in my car was as old as I was.  It was a single channel, powerful radio that would reach the folks who monitored our radios from almost anywhere in the county.  But only just.

Portable radios, when available, were shared and were the size of a football.

Our radio traffic, routine and emergency phone calls, were monitored by jail deputies (they were not yet corrections officers but deputies who had not been assigned to patrol) as an ancillary duty to booking prisoners and doing jail checks. Sometimes there would only be one of them on duty to do it all.

As I recall, Chehalis and Centralia shared a frequency and complained because they occasionally couldn’t hear each other. I seem to recall they had dead spots too. 

The fire service in the county, went to Plectrons — a kind of radio receiver — then to pagers, which was a huge step up from the loud air raid sirens (so popular with neighbors at fire stations) that used to alert the volunteers they were needed.

Different agencies couldn’t talk on the radio with each other or coordinate between officers without involving four people — whoever answered the phone for them, and both officers, relaying the information back and forth.

It wasn’t very efficient.

We got pretty crafty between CB radios, scanners, and our various agency radios. We could talk directly by cross banding; something not really popular with agency management in general and it had limits too.

As improvement came, we all hired dispatchers (except the most rural fire districts) who were dedicated to answering the 911 calls and dispatching us.  Later, the county took calls for the rural fire districts and sent out the pager tones for the appropriate fire district.

It was better, but still not very efficient.

The formation of a 911 center was a huge improvement, and made a lot of sense to me.  It still does.

Dedicated trained folks answered the 911 calls and dedicated and trained folks dispatched them. Computer-aided dispatch systems came along over time and it was much better.

It still isn’t perfect and no matter what system is in place, it never will be.

Based on my experience, there is a universal truth; there is, and always will be some natural tension between dispatchers and those they dispatch.  



Radio signals will be weak or garbled, officers will mumble or yell, two cars will try to talk at the same time and the dispatcher can’t hear either one of them, or because of the hectic nature of a 911 center, (they may be doing several things at the same time) they might not hear the radio for a minute. So we griped.

Theirs is a crazy and hectic world sometimes; maybe most of the time. It’s worse if there isn’t enough of them on duty, or their equipment is obsolete. 

We really had no idea why they didn’t answer or hear us, but we griped anyway.

But just as there is the universal tension between dispatchers and those they dispatch, there is also tension between agencies who have to pay for services when they feel they don’t have a say in the operation or quality of the service they pay for. That’s not new either.

When the 911 center was originally set up, there was an oversight group from the users.  I can’t say when it went away or why, but it did. 

More recently in my view, the county was clumsy when it did not actively seek the input of the user agencies in selecting a manager, or hear their service concerns. That strained relationship seems in part the primary impetus for the recently completed ADCOMM study.

County staff and elected officials were unwise in my opinion to ignore the vote of no confidence by dispatchers in manager Dave Anderson because it was unsigned.  

 Perhaps now is the time to reset the oversight and operational boards to provide for meaningful input by users? Maybe they are and we don’t know it yet. I certainly hope so.

There is one more universal truth about 911 centers; they will be costly no matter how it is set up but it’s hard to see how it gets cheaper, or more efficient just because there are two of them.  

 With the results from the study, and the departure of the manager, there is great opportunity for improvement. 

Can all those concerned seize it?  As a seasoned citizen I sure hope so.

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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.