Is Anybody Listening?

The Naperville Sun reports this week that the cities of Aurora and Naperville are in the process of buying new two-way radio systems for their police and fire departments. The communications gear used now is ten to fifteen years out of date, they say, and besides, in the post 9-1-1 era, they need better "interoperability."

That's the new buzz word. Interoperability. What it means in simple terms is...in a disaster, all emergency responders want to be able to talk to each other. Wonderful concept.

Except the new system Aurora and Naperville officials are buying, at a publicly stated cost of $20 million, is designed to do just the opposite. Yes, it appears to allow Aurora and Naperville agencies to talk to one another to their hearts' content. But mutual aid responders? Not so much. Outside departments summoned to assist with emergencies won't have any better "interoperability" with Aurora and Naperville than they do now and, mostly, it will be worse. In fact, other agencies won't even be able to hear the new communications system without purchasing or borrowing extremely expensive new gear and from a sole source provider at that. Who pays? I'd venture to guess the individual departments will, not Aurora and Naperville. A good example of hidden costs. Of course the plan may be to loan radios to units coming in from other jurisdictions but that's a laughable concept to anyone familiar with police and fire bureaucracies. They won't have the radios when they really need them. The radios that are loaned won't work or just won't be charged. There won't be enough of them. And the outside responders won't be trained in system protocols...ie: they won't know how to run 'em, police radios nowadays being just about as confusing to the average non-gearhead copper as a high-end cell phone, iPod or TV satellite receiver.

What Aurora and Naperville really want to do is make their police and fire communications "more secure." Police agencies have been trying to do that for as long as medical researchers have been trying to cure the common cold. Translated, it means they don't want you and me (and the three master criminals who are scanner savvy) and especially the scary, scary news media listening to them on easily purchased scanners.

The thinking is not new. I started in the news business in the 1970's. Cops regularly warned me that, by responding to police and fire incidents after hearing them on my ten-channel scanner, I was endangering emergency personnel and would therefore be subject to arrest! Yawn.

Here's my take on the Aurora/Naperville plan.

First, any publicly funded agency that feels it has to hide its daily routine from the people it serves doesn't understand its mission statement. It goes without saying that police departments should encrypt their sensitive communications. But "sensitive" would be things like homicide/gang crime/drug investigations and SWAT responses not barking dog calls, domestic fights, traffic accidents and house fires.

Second, if administrators put away their "who's listening to us?" paranoia, especially as regards the news media, and really concentrate on designing a system that is interoperable, they would find better and cheaper technology that doesn't rely on a single provider for service.

Third, the Chicago Police and Fire Departments are still working with a radio system that was state of the art in the 1960's. Forty years ago! I'm sure many Chicago coppers don't like the idea of crooks listening to them or having scanner buffs and the media showing up at their crime scenes but they manage to work around the annoyances just fine. Chicago, too, is planning to upgrade their equipment but with truly interoperable radios other agencies can easily buy if they choose to do so.

So what are Aurora and Naperville doing that's worth spending $20 million to hide?