Workers’ Ingenuity Comes Through Loud and Clear

In the days of the Internet and cellular phones, it seemed an obvious concept: a system that would enable firefighters, Highway Patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles to talk to one another by radio during an emergency.

But not until now has that been possible. The idea, developed by four sheriff’s technicians, turned out to be cheaper and easier than anticipated.

The system cost only $200 and can be used to patch together the communications networks of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County Fire Department.

“It just shows you when you think outside the box what is possible,” Sheriff Lee Baca said at a news conference Friday to announce the program.

The county plans to test the system for three months and then evaluate its effectiveness. Baca said he hopes to expand it to include every police and fire department in the county, including the LAPD.

During emergencies, firefighters and police officers often rely on dispatchers to relay information back and forth because they have not had the capacity to talk to one another. The problem has been that they use different radio frequencies.

Baca said it is a particular problem during extreme emergencies such as earthquakes and high-speed chases. He asked his deputies to come up with a solution.

Four communications technicians spent about two weeks developing a system that turned out to be much cheaper and easier than anyone had imagined. The new technology acts like a telephone party-line, allowing departments that use different radio frequencies to communicate with one another. An officer, firefighter or paramedic can call a dispatcher to patch him through to an emergency worker from another agency.

“It was something everyone had wanted for a long time,” said Jack King, electronic communications technician for the Sheriff’s Department. “Once we got started, it turned out it was fairly simple to hook it all together.”

The Sheriff’s Department is still trying to work out a few quirks.

One problem is that police and fire departments often communicate in code, and the codes vary from department to department. For now, when speaking to one another, the officers and firefighters have been instructed to use plain English, King said.