Why Can't We Talk?

[Film clips of firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical staff responding to emergencies.
Dispatcher and radio voices in the background. Among them, a dispatcher saying, "I'm not getting
through two-two-four; and a man's voice saying "I can't reach the ambulance. I need a patch, NOW!]

[Onscreen text: Why Can't We Talk? . . . when lives are at stake.]
[Onscreen text: Janet Reno, U.S. Attorney General.]

Janet Reno speaking onscreen: Protecting the residents of the United States is an enormous challenge.
Our Nation's law enforcement, fire, and EMS personnel depend on and they deserve effective radio
communication systems to face this challenge. 

[Film clips show officers riding in cars, talking on radios, ambulances, fire engines.]

Voiceover, Reno: When seconds count, delays in the vital communications between agencies, and across
jurisdictions, endangers lives and property. 

Reno speaking onscreen: This issue is too important for any of us to ignore and too big for any of us
to solve on our own. I hope that all of us, at Federal, State, and local levels, will work together to
make sure our public safety officers are equipped to do their job. If we do, all Americans will reap
the benefits.

[Onscreen text: Public Safety Wireless Spectrum.] 
[Onscreen text: John Clark, Deputy Chief, Public Safety, FCC.]

John Clark speaking onscreen: Spectrum is essentially the electromagnetic real estate in the sky. It is
the medium over which radio communications are carried. Spectrum is divided into frequencies, and
frequencies are carried in a particular channel. 

[Old pictures of police using radio, tower, police cars.]

Voiceover, Clark: Public safety entities started out in the low band VHF. As those bands became more
and more congested, and as technology developed to allow operations in higher bands, public safety
entities were granted spectrum bands in ever-higher ranges.

[Onscreen text: Mark Schwartz, 1997 President, National League of Cities, Oklahoma City Council
Member.]

[Pictures of new, contemporary radios.]

Voiceover, Mark Schwartz: Public safety frequencies are virtually all over the spectrum.

Schwartz speaking onscreen: The problem is that it isn't dedicated to public safety. There's a lot of
competition, there's cell phones, there's televisions, there's all kinds of uses that prohibit public
safety from having exclusive use. 

[Picture of a radio tower.]

Voiceover, Clark: The FCC has a mission to provide public safety the spectrum that it needs, and it has
done that over the years. But it's done it in a piecemeal fashion. 

Clark speaking onscreen: As the needs of public safety arose more spectrum was allocated. 

[Chart entitled "Public Safety Spectrum Bands."]

Voiceover, Clark: Until today, we have public safety operations at the Federal and State level in 10
bands. The problem with interoperability over all those bands is that no commercial-grade radio can
span all those bands, and you don't have the ability to have one radio operate with all of the users
from the public safety community. 

[Schwartz onscreen briefly, officers, EMS, dispatchers, firefighters responding to emergencies and
using radios to communicate.]

Voiceover, Schwartz: When we deal with the issue of interoperability, it is very difficult for any
community to have a police department on one frequency, the fire on another, and EMS on again another,
and then the rest of your employees on another frequency. Because oftentimes when disaster
strikes-police, fire, the parks department, public works-they all need to  coordinate, and if they
can't talk to one another, it's a really big problem. 

[Onscreen text: Marilyn Ward, Manager, Communications Division, Orlando Police Department]

Marilyn Ward speaking onscreen: One of my big concerns about our use of spectrum is that it is so
finite. The day that we turned this system on, we could no longer expand it. There are no more
frequencies in the icord corridor at all.   

[Onscreen text: Raymond Barnett, Telecommunications Manager, U.S. Secret Service]

Raymond Barnett speaking onscreen: Spectrum is a finite natural resource; you only have so much of it.
And so you have to try and use that as efficiently as you possibly can. 

[Onscreen text: Communications Interoperability.]

Clark speaking onscreen: Interoperability is simply the ability of two different agencies to
communicate with each other on demand and in real time. 

Ward speaking onscreen: It means that when we have to do a mutual aid response or a joint response to
any type of a critical incident that everyone is able to talk to each other. 

[Onscreen text: Mike Borrego, Communications Manager, State of Colorado]

Mike Borrego speaking onscreen: The public has an expectation out of public safety; it doesn't matter
where they're at and it doesn't matter what type of services they need. 

[Images of dispatchers using computers, an officer using a radio, and firefighters responding to a
call.]

Voiceover, Borrego: If they call 911 for help, then people are going to show up and they are going to
be able to coordinate their efforts and they can talk to each other. 

[Onscreen text: Barry Luke, Manager, Emergency Communications, 
Orange County, FL, Fire Rescue]

Barry Luke speaking onscreen: Many times they don't realize that our ability to respond quickly to them
and to locate them in an emergency is dependent on the ability of all of these responders in the public
safety community to be able to communicate among themselves. And right now that's a big problem for us. 

[Police officers communicating on radio.]
[Film clips show remains of plane crash, rescue workers at site.]

Voiceover, Captain Jeff Steffel: When flight 277 went down about 10 years ago from the Detroit
Metropolitan Airport, 18 police agencies responded to that disaster. 

[Onscreen text: Captain Jeff Steffel, Commander, Communications Division, Michigan State Police]

Steffel speaking onscreen: No two police agencies could talk to each other. So the interoperability
between police agencies makes it almost impossible for us to talk one to another. 

[Onscreen text: Beverly Harvard, Chief of Police, City of Atlanta]

Beverly Harvard speaking onscreen: We have one-person patrol cars, and that radio is, oftentimes, your
only link to your agency and indeed could be your only link to help. 

 [Film clips show law enforcement officers trying to communicate during an emergency using runners and
hand signals.]

Voiceover, Clark: We've seen in certain emergency situations runners and even hand signals be used to
try to overcome the problem of lack of radio interoperability. 


[Pictures of radios in ambulance.]

Voiceover, Donald Appleby: In our ambulances, we had seven radios. We had two radios each on three
different bands of frequencies, plus the paramedic unit radio. We had seven microphones, we had to
color-code the microphones to figure out which on you had to use. 

[Onscreen text: Donald Appleby, Project Director, Statewide Radio Systems, Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania]

Appleby speaking onscreen: You needed a book to figure out what channel you needed to talk on, to which
jurisdiction, and aside from the operational issues, you had a cost issue. Seven times the cost of the
radio unit for that one vehicle. 

[Film clip of ambulance leaving station.]
[Pictures of Oklahoma City bombing with Federal, State, and local emergency responders at the scene.]

Voiceover, Appleby: Those radios cost almost as much as the ambulance itself. 

Voiceover, Schwartz: I was at that site approximately 3 minutes after the bomb went off and witnessed
for many hours the difficulties that took place. We had the Oklahoma City Fire Department on one
frequency, the Oklahoma City Police Department is on another, the State of Oklahoma is on another
frequency, the county is on different frequencies. We had folks who couldn't communicate. 

Schwartz speaking onscreen: I guess the one that I witnessed most clearly and was most frightening
subsequent to the bombing itself was when there was a belief that there was another bomb in the
building, and the fire department is giving the order to evacuate. 

[Pictures of Federal, State, and local emergency responders at scene of bombing.]

Voiceover, Schwartz: Well, the only people that were receiving that order initially were the members of
the fire department. The police, the county, the Feds-everybody else who was in that building-they
didn't get the same information at the same time. 

Schwartz speaking onscreen: At the critical time, when we were trying to save lives in that building,
the availability of communications was not at the level that it should be. 

[Onscreen text: P. Michael Freeman, Fire Chief, Los Angeles County, CA.]
[Images: Fires, rioting, large civil disturbances, emergency responders at the scene, firefighters at a
fire, dispatchers relaying calls.]

Voiceover, Michael Freeman: Back in 1992, we had a fairly large widespread civil disturbance here in
the Los Angeles area. There was a tremendous need for firefighter personnel to receive protection from
law enforcement, to be able to talk to law enforcement, for law enforcement to be able to talk to us.
The way we accomplished that was really after probably 36 hours of operation. We traded handi-talkie
radios, and we worked through our normal relay through the dispatch center. 

Freeman speaking onscreen: It was very ineffective and really jeopardized many lives of law enforcement
personnel and firefighters. We had two firefighters that ended up getting wounded as a result of
gunfire. 

[Onscreen text: Public Safety Wireless Market.]
[Onscreen text: Larry Seligman, Commander, Technical Services, Pima County, AZ, Sheriff's Department.]
[Equipment testing. New technologies in radio equipment.]

Larry Seligman speaking onscreen: There are over 19,000 law enforcement agencies within the United
States. 

Voiceover, Seligman: Most of them purchase equipment independent of all the other 18,999 so the market
is very fragmented and despite that large number of agencies, that really isn't a high number in terms
of the amount of technology that's purchased nationwide.

[Pictures of officers using 25-30 year old radios.]
[Film alternates between brief closeups of Appleby speaking onscreen and photos of dispatchers, radios,
towers, officers using new technology in radio communications.]

Voiceover, Appleby: The issue with many agencies is that their existing radio systems are 25-30 years
old and often times are unable to get parts, are unable to maintain the equipment. It is not a very
different analogy than driving a 25-year-old car around. It's an artifact of the way the system has
developed over the past 20-40 years. They are uncoordinated; they are done on a local basis with the
funding that was available with technology that existed that day.

[Onscreen text: Bruce Blair, Radio Systems Manager, Montgomery County, MD, Police]

Bruce Blair speaking onscreen: The idea of implementing a major technology upgrade, whether it be voice
radio system or mobile data system or new communications center, all of the things we are looking to do
in the future really revolve around careful planning, systems integration. This is absolutely
essential.

Voiceover, Schwartz: There's a lot of great technology that is coming online now that will help in
terms of protecting lives and property by public service agencies. 

[Touch computer screen showing fingerprints and mugshots. GPS system.]

Schwartz speaking onscreen: You could have a police officer that would send a fingerprint from the
field or send a mugshot digitally down to dispatch to headquarters for location of vehicle, GPS system.
All these things work in such a different world in terms of being capable of enhancing public safety in
our community. 

[Photos of touch computer screen showing fingerprints and mugshots. Photo of screen of GPS system.]

Voiceover, Schwartz: These new high-tech things do nothing but eat up more spectrum, but they are
needed, and public safety needs them very desperately. 

Steffel speaking onscreen: Wide-area systems really work well. They make sense in terms of shared
infrastructure, and I think that's where we are headed in the future. 

[Images of towers, equipment, computers, radios.]

Voiceover, Ward: The economics are there for shared systems. There is no reason to build towers, to
install equipment, to go through all of the frequency coordination for one individual agency. If you
all pitch in together, you can share the same tower space. 

[Onscreen text: Steve Proctor, Technical Services Manager, State of Utah]
[Film clips: officers using new interoperability technologies, officers talking on radios.]

Steve Proctor speaking onscreen: As this technology increases, and new products and services come out,
it is going to eat up the spectrum available to develop the systems, while technologies that we may not
even be aware of will be coming forth, we need to make sure as users we efficiently use that spectrum.
 
[Film clips of officers using new interoperability technologies. Officers talking on radios.]

Voiceover, Clark: The problem of public safety interoperability is more a problem of management, of
leadership, of institutional control and institutional culture. 

Clark speaking onscreen: We know that the next few years are going to require a large investment by all
levels of government to upgrade public safety communications. 

[Film clips of officers using new interoperability technologies. Officers talking on radios.]

Voiceover, Schwartz: I think that jurisdictions are really in trouble in terms of funding when you're
very small. When you are talking about millions of dollars, unless you have some coordinated effort,
you have some assistance by the State, and there has to be a better way to do it and I think where you
get into the State and local cooperative effort, and I think the Federal Government should play a role
in that as well. 

[Onscreen text: Standards Issues.]

[Onscreen text: Raymond Barnett, Telecommunications Manager, U.S. Secret Service]

Raymond Barnett speaking onscreen: I think the public safety community would like to see the
development of standards-based equipment where we can have a competitive market to deal in so that we
can go to multiple vendors and get multiple types of technology.  

Blair speaking onscreen: I think the idea of open standards is really something that needs to be
developed by using the user community, the manufacturing community, the vendor community, but also
driven by the legislative efforts of the State and local and Federal Government. 

Voiceover, Freeman: Without standards, we can develop a very nifty system here within L.A. county but
then as resources come as mutual aid situation from all over the State of California they may not be in
the loop. 

Voiceover, Blair: One group can't really initiate or drive open standards. It has to be a cooperative
effort amongst all these groups.

Voiceover, Barnett: I see the evolution of standards as being very important. But what we need today,
immediately, are some standards to allow us to interconnect disparate systems or proprietary systems
built by separate and different vendors so that we can link those together so that we can begin to
start to share information between our jurisdictions. 

[Film clip of EMS personnel rescuing a victim.]
[Onscreen text: Tom Sorley, Radio Systems Administrator, City of Orlando]

Tom Sorley speaking onscreen: They've been getting help all along because we make do with what we have.
The problem is that it's time. Time is life. 

[Onscreen text: G. Thomas Steele, Commander, Automated Systems, Alexandria, VA, Police Department]
[EMS rescuing victim.]

G. Thomas Steele speaking onscreen: We need the spectrum, we need the technology, and we need the
government coordination to do that. 

Harvard speaking onscreen: The ability, or the inability, to communicate in a timely manner could be
that thread between life and death. 

[Onscreen text: Christy Duckwall, Emergency Services, Morgan County, WV]
[Officers, firefighters, EMT, dispatchers responding to emergency situations.]

Christy Duckwall speaking onscreen: We're in the business of public safety, and there should be no
compromise. 

Voiceover, Schwartz: What public safety agencies do in this country is save lives and save property and
I think the use of spectrum should be used, number one, to preserve life and property in this country.

[Onscreen text: For additional copies of this video or for more information, please call the National
Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center, a program of the National Institute of Justice, U.S.
Department of Justice at 1-800-248-2742. Produced for the U.S. Department of the Attorney General Janet
Reno. Office of the Associate Attorney General Raymond C. Fisher. Portions of this video are owned by
and have been provided with permission by Motorola, Trimble, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Puma
County Sheriff's Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, San Diego County Sheriff's
Department, San Bernardino County Fire Department. It is unlawful to duplicate any portion without
their written consent.] 

[Onscreen text: This video was prepared by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology
Center-Rocky Mountain region, supported by grant number 96-MU-MU-KOLZ awarded by the National Institute
of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this video are
those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.]

[U.S. Department of Justice Seal.]