Police radio glitch declared a fluke
By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Public safety radio communications were disrupted March 7 by a fluke at a North Shore microwave relay station, not a failure of the city's 800 megahertz digital radio system, officials said.
That system, used mainly by police, is "very reliable" — but no radio network is guaranteed not to fail, said Assistant Police Chief Karl Godsey.
"It's like searching for the Holy Grail — it's just not there," he said.
A top police union official said that the $43 million radio system works
far better now than when it was installed several years ago, but that officers still complain of problems nearly every day.
A backup system that officers switched to on March 7 didn't always work right in six of the island's eight police districts, said Detective Alex Garcia, O'ahu chairman of the State of Hawai'i Organization of Police Officers.
"The end result was that officers were at risk and the public was at risk," he told a City Council panel yesterday.
Officers often use personal cell phones to communicate when they can't reach each other over the radio, Garcia said.
The March 7 glitch didn't cause any emergencies, but it disrupted radio traffic among police, firefighters, lifeguards and others, officials said.
It was the latest in a series of snags that have hampered expensive efforts to upgrade public safety communications in Honolulu.
Engineers have struggled to identify and eliminate "dead spots" in radio coverage, background noise problems and dispatch system failures in the 800 megahertz network.
City Information Technology director Courtney Harrington said the March 7 problem was a rare failure in the chain of microwave relays that ring the island and support all city radio systems.
"That particular type of problem, I don't know if I'll live long enough to see it again," he said.
The City Council may seek an independent audit or study of the system, but took no action yesterday because of concerns about the cost and potential impact of a study on planned radio upgrade work.
Reach Johnny Brannon at jbrannon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
