Posted on: Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Glitch hinders police radios

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Police officials said they don't expect a software glitch that hindered radio communications on Sunday to become a recurring problem.

The malfunction was triggered when an officer in the Central O'ahu-North Shore district accidentally pressed an emergency button on his radio Sunday morning and it blocked communications between dispatchers and officers in a particular "talk group" — one segment of those using the radio channel.

Communication was restored when the officer's radio was reset, but technicians knew the problem went beyond the single radio when they ran a test in another district and recreated the glitch at about 1 p.m., Honolulu Police Department Assistant Chief Karl Godsey said.

Restarting part of the computerized system cleared things up, but the precise cause of the problem is unclear, Godsey said.

"The interesting thing was that the technician who was here for a training session said he's never seen it happen before," said Godsey, who has been shepherding the department's recent conversion to an all-digital communications system.

The problem was traced to a computer in which a sound card locked up when the emergency buttons were pushed, due to a software problem that disappeared as soon as that computer was restarted, Godsey said.

At that point, about 4:30 p.m., officers were cleared to resume using their emergency buttons. Police were told not to use this feature — which, Godsey said, enables radio users to broadcast priority messages without pressing a "talk" button — for more than six hours.