The sheriff’s office wants a new radio system they say will boost deputy safety on dangerous assignments, but the $5.1 million estimated cost may be too pricey for McLennan County to bear alone.

Sheriff’s deputies are frequently called to assist local police departments on major incidents, but it’s difficult to transmit messages to the other officers once on the scene. That’s because the portable radios deputies carry run on a different system than the radios used by most local agencies.

“Once our deputies get out of their cars, they are no longer able to communicate effectively with the other agencies they are assisting,” Chief Deputy Randy Plemons said.

McLennan County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Baughman with his car radio.
Rod Aydelotte / Waco Tribune-Herald

It creates a significant safety issue in which deputies may not be able to quickly request backup, like in a December incident when a Falls County Sheriff’s deputy was injured while pursuing a suspect in the Bruceville area.

Although the deputy could radio a Falls County dispatcher for help, the lag time caused in relaying messages to local officers to locate him and render aid could have been fatal, officials said.

“When I tried to call in on my hand-held radio and give directions (to the sheriff’s office) to where we were at, I couldn’t talk to them on my radio,” said Lorena Police Chief Tom Dickson, who was the first to locate the injured deputy. “I had to leave the deputy and run back to my car to get on the mobile radio.”

Sheriff’s officials recently asked county commissioners to consider installing a digital, multi-channel VHF (very high frequency) system that can form “talk groups” to let the various agencies radio each other in the field.

Representatives from Woodway, Hewitt, Lacy Lakeview and Lorena police departments were among a group of supporters in the audience of the commissioners court backing the proposal.

While county officials agree the current radio system is inefficient, the real question is whether the county can afford the $5.1 million to overhaul the system right now.

“To know that we may send someone out at night knowing that they may not be able to communicate if it turns tragic, I find that totally unacceptable,” said commissioner Ben Perry, who previously worked for the Woodway and Waco police departments.

Dueling systems

Sheriff patrol cars are equipped with two different radio systems — an 800 megahertz system that can communicate with Waco police and fire departments, and a VHF system that transmits activity from various police and volunteer fire agencies across the county.

The county first installed the 800 MHz system in the late ’80s in a joint agreement with the city of Waco, but uses the VHF system to dispatch calls for local police and volunteer fire departments.

The deputies only carry a portable 800 MHz radio when they step out of their vehicles, meaning they can speak to their dispatcher and to Waco police and fire responders, but not to responders from smaller agencies like Lorena and Lacy Lakeview.

Simply switching to portable VHF radios won’t work, because the county has a single-channel system that doesn’t support a high number of users at one time. Without a multichannel system, officers speaking in the field would talk over one another.

Similarly, cellphones won’t remedy the problem because they don’t offer reliable service in the field. And radios allow instant communication with multiple people at once.

The two different systems also create issues for county dispatchers who have to listen to both radios at the same time and relay messages to officers in the field.

“It’s a dangerous situation. Those dispatchers are very concerned about the officers and the deputies that are out there, and they’re paying attention the best that they can,” Plemons said. “But we’re concerned about something falling through the cracks.”

Besides the safety issue, the county also needs to upgrade its radio system to comply with new federal regulations. The city of Waco is also upgrading its system, a move that will eventually force the county to follow suit because the two agencies share their radio system under the joint agreement.

Wayne Canaday, equipment maintenance director for the county, said once Waco finishes its upgrade, the city won’t maintain its portion of the older system and will eventually abandon it, leaving the county unable to use it as well.

Officer down

In December, Falls County Sheriff’s Deputy Louis V. Lourcey Jr. radioed for help in Bruceville when his legs were crushed between his patrol vehicle and a white Mazda 626 he was chasing.

While officers struggled to locate Lourcey, the suspect drove to a nearby Cefco gas station and carjacked a patron, shooting the vehicle’s owner five times.

Officers from Bruceville- Eddy, Woodway and the Texas Department of Public Safety all jumped in to assist. Lorena Chief Dickson said coordinating all the agencies was a challenge.

“It was basically the perfect storm that came together, because we had a deputy that was injured, we had a civilian that was shot, we had this guy running loose, and we had all these police agencies that were converging on Bruce-ville-Eddy,” Dickson said. “But with a single channel, you’re only going to get one person talking on the radio at one time. It was very frustrating.”

The radio problems also hampered a recent police investigation. Lacy Lakeview Police Chief Dennis Stapleton recounted an incident earlier this year where the sheriff’s department was asked to help with a suspect barricaded in a home.

The sheriff’s deputies had to radio information to their dispatcher, who in turn called Lacy Lakeview’s dispatcher so that person could relay the message to officers on the scene.

“We had movement in a window from where the guy was trying to escape,” Stapleton said. “But by the time the information got to me and command, he was already gone.”

If the sheriff’s office changes to a VHF system, it will no longer have direct communication with Waco police and fire.

Funding support

Gaining commissioners court approval for the new radio system could be a battle.

McLennan County Sheriff’s patrol cars have two radio systems in their vehicles that pick up police activity throughout the county, but deputies have limited communication with other law enforcement agencies once they get out of the patrol cars.
Rod Aydelotte / Waco Tribune-Herald

County officials haven’t shelled out $5 million for a single project in several years. The commissioners court has also discussed keeping the 2011-12 budget as lean as possible to offset a potential shortfall in revenue from the state.

County Judge Jim Lewis said radio communication has been a problem for decades despite past attempts to fix it.

“We’ve heard this and heard this . . . and we’re still at the same situation that we were 20, 25 years ago,” Lewis said. “After a while, it becomes a con game to me that we’ve spent millions of dollars (collectively) and we can’t talk to each other. We just keep throwing money at it.”

Commissioner Kelly Snell said the county should first look for grants to pay for part of the costs, while Commissioner Lester Gibson suggested that other agencies benefiting from county law enforcement assistance could chip in.

“Why can’t law enforcement come together and say, ‘It will be in our best interest to combine our resources into one system for everybody’ ?” Gibson said. “I know that’s a big task, especially when you’re dealing with taxpayers’ dollars, but at some point it would be in the best interest if we all come up with a game plan.”

Stapleton, with Lacy Lake-view, said it would be difficult for the smaller agencies to pay some of the costs, especially volunteer fire departments that run on limited funds and donations.

But Dickson said he would support paying some of the new system costs or even a monthly user fee for the dispatch services. He has asked the Lorena City Council to set aside money for the project in the upcoming fiscal year budget, though the request has not been approved yet.

“What I have to ask myself is when these guys and girls go out at night, am I giving them every tool reasonably possible to keep them safe?” Dickson said. “We buy bulletproof vests and equipment that goes on their belt, but if they don’t have the basic essential communication with other people to call for help, that’s not acceptable.”

rdennis@wacotrib.com

757-5755