The following are 4 examples are real, and demonstrate some of the advantages of having an 800 MHz system. Anoka County has been utilizing 800 for just over two years now. Even though every situation is unique, we have developed somewhat standard procedures for pursuits and other critical incidents.
The Setting:
Monday morning, December 4, 2006 at 07:54. It was the first snow of the season that actually stayed on the ground. The roadways were a little slippery and rush hour traffic going slow.
To demonstrate:
The safety feature of an officer able to ‘talk over’ dispatch for emergency traffic and patching abilities.
The Action:
Main police channel dispatcher (Channel 1= Talk Group 1) is keyed up and giving a routine report call to an Andover deputy (1A26). In the middle of her transmission (TX), another county deputy (1Z22) keys up on TG1 and is very excited calling in a traffic stop. This demonstrates one of the safety features of the 800 system. Units on the street are ‘bonked’ if they try to TX when another unit is already keyed up, but if they TX while dispatch is talking, dispatch will hear them in their ear. However it is important to note, the units on the street will not hear this. TG1 interrupted herself and stated, “…and 1A26 stand by, 1Z22 go ahead.” The deputy then stated he was in pursuit of a gold impala going southbound on Hwy 65 from County Road 22 and the vehicle was not stopping. Other deputies then jumped in and advised they were en route and their locations, all while 1Z22 continued to give updates. The suspect was driving very dangerously, passing in the ditches as well as the median ditch and running through red lights. As the chase got closer to Blaine and because it was on a state highway, and because the incident was fast and in-progress we then decided to patch our main channels to MINSEF. It is times like these where it is unrealistic to have officers have to switch channels on their radios. They are moving too fast and should not have to have that additional distraction. Also, because our surrounding agencies do not all have 800, we always patch both the MINSEF VHF channel to the MINSEF 800 talk group. In this pursuit we therefore patched both Minsef TG and Minsef –VHF, to our main channels. The officers involved did not have to do anything on their radios.
One thing to remember is the person doing the patching is going to be unselected to those resources while patching. In other words, they are not able to listen. It’s a good idea to have another position do the patching so your main dispatcher does not have to be interrupted, other than to multi-select all the talk groups.
And since the pursuit had now taken over our main TG, at the same time we patched we announced that our ‘regular’ main traffic would now be on LE TAC1. This is an Anoka County only TG we created and is similar to ATAC’s or PTAC’s, but is local only.
The suspect ended up crashing and bailing within minutes, wherein we had other cities responding, including a K9 from Coon Rapids. The suspect was apprehended and we tore down the patch and resumed normal radio traffic.
The Setting:
Monday afternoon, December 4, 2006 at 13:57 hours. Warm weather. Light snow.
To demonstrate:
Use of LE Tac talk group in a situation where the incident is calm enough to have officer’s change their radios.
The Action:
Dispatch received a transfer call from On-Star stating they were tracking a stolen vehicle. It was traveling northbound on Hwy 65 from I694 in Fridley. We confirmed the car was indeed stolen from a dealership in Bloomington. Fridley positioned themselves appropriately and the first officer spotting the car advised it may be actually going to Friendly Chevrolet, but then the vehicle turned into a trailer park and fled. The vehicle was being driven by a male and had a female passenger. Units immediately began setting up a perimeter around the trailer park. Another squad found the vehicle unoccupied.
It was at this point that we decided to switch the incident to our county tac talk group (LE Tac1). Because it was no longer a fleeing/pursuit situation, we felt it was appropriate to have officers involved switch themselves to the tac talk group. This works best when possible because it then keeps ‘normal’ main channel traffic on the correct channel.
The female suspect was apprehended immediately and the male was located about 30 minutes later by the K9, hiding in a shed.
The Setting:
Tuesday morning, December 5, 2006 at 07:04 hours.
To demonstrate:
The importance of having your Activity Log on your screen and monitoring unselected talk groups.
The Action:
Dispatch receives a call from Lifetime Fitness in Coon Rapids advising that a male who was a suspect of recent thefts in the business was presently in the men’s locker room. Coon Rapids was familiar with the suspect and several cars were then en route.
First officer arrives and within minutes advises on the main talk group that the suspect is running, but not sure if inside or outside. Almost simultaneously we hear another officer yelling that the suspect was leaving in a vehicle, gave the plate and the direction of travel. Problem was he was not on our main TG!! We quickly looked at the Activity Log to see which TG he was on and determined he was on MetTac P (a metro-wide tac channel for both conventional and 800 units). The dispatcher on the main TG very quickly patched our main TG’s to MetTac P.
In this instance, because the second officer was not on a normally scanned TG, chances were no one else heard him. So another dispatcher quickly patched, then repeated his radio traffic over all the patched TG’s. The suspect was apprehended within minutes after bailing from the car.
The Setting:
Friday morning, December 8, 2006 at 08:54 hours.
To demonstrate:
Another example of choosing to switch ‘regular’ main TG traffic to a tac channel and keeping the critical incident on the main so units do not have to switch their radios midstream.
The Action:
The center starts receiving multiple 911 calls all at once, mostly on the cell phone lines. There is an accident in Ham Lake at Hwy65 and Constance Blvd involving a loaded school bus of elementary aged children. First call indicated it was a rollover. Fortunately, it was not, however there ended up being many injuries, 4 of which were critical. Within 3 minutes of the call, dispatch determined this critical incident required its own TG, and because of the franticness we left it on the main TG and switched ‘regular’ traffic to our tac channel (LE Tac1). This was a decision made primarily by the dispatch supervisor. Normally we would ask the incident command unit if they would like their own channel, but this crisis was obviously in need of immediate decisions.
There were units assisting from multiple jurisdictions, all within Anoka County. The first outside agency we used was the Air Care units. These were requested within seconds of the initial call. We decided not to patch the MINSEF’s to the incident because it was primarily contained within our county, and we did not want to tie up the statewide channels unnecessarily. Plus, we did not want the Air Care units interfering with units on the scene. It worked well because we had one squad that was in charge of the landing zone and he alone went to MINSEF (we did patch both 800 and conventional MINSEF’s prior to this).
Although units did not clear the scene entirely until around 14:30, we resumed ‘normal’ traffic on all TG’s at 12:30.