By Police1 Staff
CINCINNATI — Motorola says they are continuing to work with the Cincinnati Police Department to resolve a reported issue with the agency’s radios.
The Cincinnati police union says officers’ radios are continuing to fail even as Motorola and police officials work to resolve the issues, which first came to light last summer.
According to Fox 19, transmissions are not understood and, at times, are not broadcast at all, putting officers at risk.
Motorola officials said in a statement:
“Motorola Solutions and the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) continue to work closely together to ensure new remote speaker microphones (RSM) more closely emulate the audio capabilities and functionality that CPD has been used to for many years. CPD’s radios were deployed last summer and a small number have already been reprogrammed to optimize audio and functionality capability with the RSMs. Motorola Solutions stands ready to quickly reprogram the remaining fleet of radios to work with the new RSMs as soon as CPD indicates its preferred timing to move forward with this software deployment.”
Sgt. Dan Hils, president of the local FOP, said police officials have been working with Motorola for months.
Hils kicked off a social media campaign last week to bring further attention to the issue.
“Many failures of communications are being reported to me and again the radios are failing at the worst possible times,” Hils wrote in a Facebook post. “The failures are occurring during foot pursuits or other high-stress moments. There have been months of patience with only very modest improvement.”
Police officers and their families posted photos on social media, asking Motorola to fix the radios because “officers’ lives depend on them.”
https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.e.baker.71/posts/10155297054713454
In November, the police department and Motorola conducted tests of different microphone types and a new radio software configuration to attempt to fix the issue. As a result of the tests, city manager Harry Black concluded that Motorola would implement the new configuration on all radios, transition to a new microphone model, monitor the radio network for performance enhancement options, and assist the department with an overview of the evaluation results and best practices refresher training.
Police Chief Eliot Issac wrote in December that although “substantial progress” has been made to achieve a solution, “there are a number of isolated failures, the causes of which we are working to identify and resolve.”
Hils was scheduled to take his concerns about the radios to city hall on Monday.