Police, firefighters and public safety officials around Maryland have spent years complaining about how they often couldn’t communicate to each other when responding to emergencies.
Many local jurisdictions, particularly in the Baltimore area, have worked out the issue on their own, but Thursday, Gov. Martin O’Malley said the state was going to spend whatever it takes to have all first responders and their agencies on the same interoperable communications system.
The governor issued an executive order creating a project management officer to oversee construction of a statewide 700 megahertz communications system. It will include computer-aided dispatch for law enforcement and public safety as well as connecting closed-circuit television systems.
O’Malley said the state has lagged behind local jurisdictions in getting equipment to communicate with other systems.
“We didn’t take the lead on this,” said State Police Superintendent Terrence Sheridan. He said the state police system is a half-century old.
Sheridan gave two examples of how the lack of interoperable communications has affected a response to incidents: the escape of a prisoner from Laurel Regional Hospital in which the corrections officers couldn’t communicate with local police but had to go through dispatchers; and an incident on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, where police and fire units had to communicate by messengers on foot.
“It’s going to take several years” to get the system operational, said John Contestabile, who heads the project as director of engineering and emergency services for the State Transportation Department. The state has already invested in communications towers and fiber -optic cable to connect them, Contestabile said, but the ultimate cost — at least in the tens of millions — will depend on what vendors propose, which could involve a combination of radio, cell phone and Internet technologies.
Besides the state agencies, the biggest hole in the current system is Prince George’s County, whose first responders cannot communicate with neighboring jurisdictions by radio.
That county is now in the second year of a $65 million project to build a new communications system to solve the problem, said Public Safety Director Vernon Herron.
