In February 2011, a St. Petersburg, FL, Police Department Officer was shot and killed while investigating a report of a suspicious person. Law enforcement agencies from throughout the Tampa Bay region responded to assist in the search for the suspect. Many of the first responder’s radios had recently been programmed with additional talkgroups to allow them to communicate on the countywide P25 network for interoperability. When the mutual aid law enforcement units tried to communicate on the P25 talkgroups, their radios did not work. A less desirable (and less reliable) console patch had to be created to allow the officers to coordinate their search. It was later determined that a programming error allowed the radio to be fully operable on most frequencies but unable to communicate during a critical interoperability response.

Critical Programming Tool Demoed at IWCE

At this year’s IWCE, NPSTC’s Radio PCR Working Group demonstrated a new tool that would have solved this problem. Following the Florida incident, this issue of non-interoperability was brought before the NPSTC Governing Board during a meeting in Washington, D.C. NPSTC immediately embraced this issue and authorized the formation of a special Working Group. By September of that same year, the Radio PCR Working Group was fully organized and began holding monthly conference calls with public safety practitioners and manufacturers.

In 2011, there were more than eight vendors manufacturing P25 equipment. Each of them had their own proprietary programming software and none of the software packages were compatible.   The technician would have to know the specifics of each software system and understand that the same data element (i.e., frequency) might have a different label in each vendors’ program. The complexity in navigating pages of software programming could easily cause the introduction of errors and incorrect settings.

After 3 years of work, the NPSTC Radio PCR Working Group has completed a radio Programming and Management tool (PAM).  This tool uses an Excel spreadsheet to capture specific P25 radio programming data fields.  Radio programming is very complex with many data fields that assign frequencies, IDs, features, and options. A slight error during the programming process will prohibit the radio from accessing a trunking system or conventional channel when the radio is used.   This issue impacts public safety agencies using radio equipment from multiple vendors.  It also creates a huge safety issue at the scene of a major incident when large quantities of radios need to be programmed for mutual aid use. To read the full report and download the tool visit NPSTC’s website at these links.

NPSTC PAM Tool:  http://npstc.org/download.jsp?tableId=37&column=217&id=3010&file=NPTSC_PAM_Tool_A1.xlsx

Radio PCR Report : http://npstc.org/download.jsp?tableId=37&column=217&id=3011&file=Radio_PCR_Report_v3.pdf