Westchester County Police Communications Project

[helicopper 1,050]

Build one big building and have one floor PD dispatch, another floor FD & EMS dispatch.

Or just move the PD dispatch into the TMC where all the infrastructure already exists and SP dispatch takes place. Cellular 911 calls are received there, all the cameras on all the roads can be viewed there, etc. etc. etc.

Let all the FD and EMS dispatching be done at 60-Control and let all the PD dispatching be done from the TMC. Hmmm...

[mymack1 38]

Westchester County Police should have went with a Trunk radio system.

[helicopper 1,050]

Westchester County Police should have went with a Trunk radio system.

Good in theory but practically there are lots of problems. First and foremost there aren't enough frequencies available for an effective trunked system for PD.

I think PD communications should be regionalized and there should be communications zones so there are improved responses and at least a margin of added safety. Just putting County PD on trunked wouldn't really do a whole lot for anyone.

[spin_the_wheel 460]

Fire Departments NOT dispatched by 60 Control:

Briarcliff Manor

Dobbs Ferry

Elmsford

Fairview

Hartsdale

Hastings

Irvington

Larchmont

Mount Vernon

Ossining

Scarsdale

Somers

Tarrytown

White Plains

Yonkers

Montrose VA

Not 100% sure here, but I'm bored and will take a stab at it.... Please feel free to correct me!

Police PSAPs

Ardsley PD

Bedford PD

Briarcliff Manor PD

Bronxville PD

Buchanan PD (Done by Peekskill PD)

Croton PD

Dobbs Ferry PD

Eastchester PD

Elmsford PD

Greenburgh PD

Harrison PD

Hastings PD

Irvington PD

Larchmont PD

Mamaroneck Town PD

Mamaroneck Village PD

Mount Kisco PD

Mount Pleasant PD

Mount Vernon PD

New Castle PD

New Rochelle PD

New York State Police (Cortlandt, Hawthorne, Lewisboro, Pound Ridge, Somers) (All done at TMC)

North Castle PD

Ossining Town PD

Ossining Village PD

Peekskill PD

Pelham PD

Pelham Manor PD

Pleasantville PD

Port Chester PD

Rye PD

Rye Brook PD

Scarsdale PD

Sleepy Hollow PD

Tarrytown PD

Westchester County PD

White Plains PD

Yonkers PD

Yorktown PD

FD / Other PSAPs

Empress EMS

Fairview FD

Hartsdale FD

Mount Vernon FD

Scarsdale FD

Somers FD

"Retired PSAPs"

Lake Mohegan FD

Port Chester FD

Rye FD

Wow I did not know there were that many FD's that were PSAP's...the norm is for the PD to take the calls and give to FD's, even with their own dispatcher. I do believe it costs alot of money to be a PSAP....anyone know this for sure, it's not a simple process. So when you are in Hartsdale and dial 911 Hartsdale FD answers the phone, and then switches PD calls to the right PD agency? Or the PD who answers switches the fire calls to FD? In Nassau no FD is a PSAP. There are a few PD's besides Nassau County PD who are PSAP's. In this case if your in their range, your 911 call goes to the PD dispatcher who will alert the FD in their area or call Nassau Fire Communications with the alarm for dispatch.

Edited August 16, 2009 by spin_the_wheel

[Bnechis 3,961]

Westchester County Police should have went with a Trunk radio system.

Can you explain why?

What advantage (also vs. what cost)

[Remember585 815]

Wow I did not know there were that many FD's that were PSAP's...the norm is for the PD to take the calls and give to FD's, even with their own dispatcher. I do believe it costs alot of money to be a PSAP....anyone know this for sure, it's not a simple process. So when you are in Hartsdale and dial 911 Hartsdale FD answers the phone, and then switches PD calls to the right PD agency? Or the PD who answers switches the fire calls to FD? In Nassau no FD is a PSAP. There are a few PD's besides Nassau County PD who are PSAP's. In this case if your in their range, your 911 call goes to the PD dispatcher who will alert the FD in their area or call Nassau Fire Communications with the alarm for dispatch.

For the FDs and Empress, PD takes the 911 call and directs it to the appropriate service.

[mymack1 38]

County Police has 10 VHF sites, which is not enough to cover the entire county. There should be at least 20 sites. A Digital Trunk system would deliver much better interoperability and clearer radio Communications between the Officers and Dispatchers. If an Officer arrives on the scene of a MVA and has to walk back to his car because his Portable does not work. That is a problem.

[Bnechis 3,961]

County Police has 10 VHF sites, which is not enough to cover the entire county. There should be at least 20 sites.

Poor coverage is a critical issue, but a trucked system can be just as poor if it does not have enough sites.

A Digital Trunk system would deliver much better interoperability and clearer radio Communications between the Officers and Dispatchers. If an Officer arrives on the scene of a MVA and has to walk back to his car because his Portable does not work. That is a problem.

A trunk system does not ensure better interoperability just much greater costs. If not all agencies have or use the trunked radio then its no better. Many of the career fire depts in Westchester have there own radio systems and do not use the trunked radios. when we are operating at an incident we are all on our channel except for MA units who are told be 60 control to go to trunked, where they cant talk to us and we them. Many switch to our channel (nontrunked) for interoperability.

We originally developed our system after Westchester advised us that the trunk system would not work in the southern 2/3 of our city (or PFD,PMFD,LFD,TMFD, MVFD)

Our PD has had a crap system for years and has to walk back all the time. They have more repeaters/recivers than the FD. We have great coverage (so much so that we never deployed 3 recievers that we purchased. Both are nontrunked our portables work everywhere (except inside 1 highrise and we have special procedures/equipment to deal with that building) and they are hit or miss.

2 different issues....coverage and interoberability, and both can be done without costing $3,000 per portable radio

[mymack1 38]

I agree that a Trunking System is extremely expensive, but if designed the right way it can be very reliable. Radio system manufacturers and designers will never guarantee, and it is impractical to expect, 100% coverage. In a trunked system, no coverage means no communications.

Bidirectional Amplifiers work very well with addressing building coverage issues, but this makes more sense in the Law Enforcement and EMS community. Firefighters checking for extension can accidentally tear into the antenna wires behind the walls etc.

I am surprised Westchester County is not addressing coverage issues with the current Trunk System. A tower is needed in Rockland County to cover the Hudson River Communities.

[Remember585 815]

Have vehicle repeaters ever been explored for WCPD? Maybe UHF portables and a PAC-RT type repeater on their VHF system could be helpful, considering all of the buildings and odd terrains the WCPD has to deal with.

Trunking, it would cost way too much for a safe, portable radio friendly system for the WCPD.

[NYRangers30 1]

As much as i believe that it would make more sense for at least all FD and EMS agencies to be under one roof, you have to understand why they don't want to. Monday night when we had the wicked storm it took me about a mile and a half to be able to sign on as responding since at the time Mount Kisco, Bedford Hills, Bedford, Armonk and Chappaqua were all operating on Fire 16, and it wasn't because the dispatchers weren't answering, it was because it took me that long to get air space since i kept getting stepped on. Then you look at places like somers for example and you don't have to worry about stuff like that because they self operate on their own frequency.

[Bnechis 3,961]

Have vehicle repeaters ever been explored for WCPD? Maybe UHF portables and a PAC-RT type repeater on their VHF system could be helpful, considering all of the buildings and odd terrains the WCPD has to deal with.

We had them for 20 years and they work fine as long as only 1 vehicle was within a 1/2 mile of the scene, if you had multiple vehicles or scenes, they would lock up and you had nothing. We ditched them 3+ years ago.

[Bnechis 3,961]

As much as i believe that it would make more sense for at least all FD and EMS agencies to be under one roof, you have to understand why they don't want to. Monday night when we had the wicked storm it took me about a mile and a half to be able to sign on as responding since at the time Mount Kisco, Bedford Hills, Bedford, Armonk and Chappaqua were all operating on Fire 16, and it wasn't because the dispatchers weren't answering, it was because it took me that long to get air space since i kept getting stepped on. Then you look at places like somers for example and you don't have to worry about stuff like that because they self operate on their own frequency.

Sounds like a training problem and a policy problem about how many and who needs to chat about what on the radio. FDNY has at least 3x the number of vehicles operating on a given channel, and it works there.

Why did you need to sign on? What were you responding to and on what rig?

[Remember585 815]

As much as i believe that it would make more sense for at least all FD and EMS agencies to be under one roof, you have to understand why they don't want to. Monday night when we had the wicked storm it took me about a mile and a half to be able to sign on as responding since at the time Mount Kisco, Bedford Hills, Bedford, Armonk and Chappaqua were all operating on Fire 16, and it wasn't because the dispatchers weren't answering, it was because it took me that long to get air space since i kept getting stepped on. Then you look at places like somers for example and you don't have to worry about stuff like that because they self operate on their own frequency.

Your profile says you're 14-17 - why would you be on a radio?!

[Remember585 815]

We had them for 20 years and they work fine as long as only 1 vehicle was within a 1/2 mile of the scene, if you had multiple vehicles or scenes, they would lock up and you had nothing. We ditched them 3+ years ago.

I remember that. Did you have any form of an SOP where it stated only one rig turned on the repeater and everyone else used that unit's? I know some places will put the first due's repeater on for all to use, as needed.

[ck234 8]

Just to answer the question Yes. The Westchester County Communications Center has not been upgraded in probably close to 30 years, unlike 60 control. The radio room is currently being moved to another part of the building and completely redone with all new equipment. The finish date has not been determined however should be in a few months, by the end of year for sure. Also included was new radio's for all Police Officers and all Police cars. All 10 towers where also updated.

I was told that the furniture was from raymour and flannigan.

[Bnechis 3,961]

I remember that. Did you have any form of an SOP where it stated only one rig turned on the repeater and everyone else used that unit's? I know some places will put the first due's repeater on for all to use, as needed.

We had sop's, we even found that sometimes they would just turn on. We also had issues when we had more than 1 incident, which is not unheard of here. Additional issues were with ambulances needing them

[Goose 188]

Isn't part of the problem frequency licensing? I remember hearing that NYC has alot of UHF on lock down and there are simply not enough frequencies for the current system to be full proof.

Ultimately, the County doesn't have the balls to strong arm the local municipalities like it should be - as far as consolidation of PSAPs are concerned. On the EMS side of things, it becomes a patient care issue as EMD is now a standard of care. A community shouldn't suffer because PD doesn't want to spend the money or time putting their desk Sgts through EMD school.

[SteveOFD 176]

Isn't part of the problem frequency licensing? I remember hearing that NYC has alot of UHF on lock down and there are simply not enough frequencies for the current system to be full proof.

Goose

You are correct that NYC has a lot of unused frequencies, but check out my Westchester Frequencies thread. There are a lot of Westchester agencies that, because they have their own frequency, they are tying up that freq and adjacent freq's from being used within a designated radius of that license.

[Guest metalcop80]

It seems like a lot of money for some new rugs.

[Mofire24 27]

Isn't part of the problem frequency licensing? I remember hearing that NYC has alot of UHF on lock down and there are simply not enough frequencies for the current system to be full proof.

Ultimately, the County doesn't have the balls to strong arm the local municipalities like it should be - as far as consolidation of PSAPs are concerned. On the EMS side of things, it becomes a patient care issue as EMD is now a standard of care. A community shouldn't suffer because PD doesn't want to spend the money or time putting their desk Sgts through EMD school.

Goose

Why should any pd sit there and EMD a call when 60 control is already trained for. It takes 2 seconds to transfer the call and no cummunity is suffering obviously you have never been around a dispatch center if you have one sgt on dispatching at a local pd what happens if there is a robbery should he put that on hold when he could have just transfered the call to 60 where they have the resources to complete the job and That's right they dispatch the ambulance and medics throughout the county so it only makes sense for 60 to emd they can give the medics and ambulance updates as they emd. The pd's have alot of other things going on .

[spin_the_wheel 460]

Goose

Why should any pd sit there and EMD a call when 60 control is already trained for. It takes 2 seconds to transfer the call and no cummunity is suffering obviously you have never been around a dispatch center if you have one sgt on dispatching at a local pd what happens if there is a robbery should he put that on hold when he could have just transfered the call to 60 where they have the resources to complete the job and That's right they dispatch the ambulance and medics throughout the county so it only makes sense for 60 to emd they can give the medics and ambulance updates as they emd. The pd's have alot of other things going on .

For that reason NO pd should be dispatching fire calls as well, the sgt. is on the phone taking the robbery info, and the other line is ringing for a house fire. All fd's should go through 60 control. This would help them increase manning, probably get better pay and help in a host of other things. The same problem exists here in Nassau County.