Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The enhanced radio communications system that Jefferson County purchased with the $1.2 million appropriation that it received from the Florida Legislature this past summer should soon be up and running.
“I’m confident that by March we should have the new system in place,” Sheriff Mac McNeill said this week, adding that his personnel were already in training for the transition to the new system.
The reason that the system has taken longer to install than expected, he said, was due to delays caused by Covid and supply chain issues.
The new system represents a state-of-the-art upgrade. Once installed, it will allow the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) and Jefferson County Fire and Rescue (JCFR) to be part of the Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System (SLERS), a unified digital radio network that permits interagency radio voice communications among participating agencies throughout Florida. It will also enhance the Emergency Management’s communications ability.
State agencies that already utilize SLERS include the Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Local law-enforcement agencies that also currently use the network include Leon and Taylor counties.
The way that things work now, the JCSO must individually patched into the other agencies if it wishes to communicate with them, a process that is time consuming and not always successful. The new system will allow the department to connect with the other agencies easily and at will.
It will also eliminate the current system’s shortcoming, such as the coverage gaps that exist in certain parts of the county and that can potentially put emergency service personnel at risk if they are unable to communicate with their bases.
What’s more, if a widespread power outage occurs because towers are knocked down during a storm, the SLERS has priority for power restoration. Whereas currently, according to McNeill, if a tower goes down in a storm, his department is on its own.
The new system will also update both the 911 network and the agency’s Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD), so that individuals will be able to text distress messages to 911. And it will enhance deputies’ ability to complete reports and more efficiently interact with databases from their vehicles, among things.
“It will bring us up to the 21st century and make the county safer,” is the way that McNeill put it earlier, noting that the current system dates from 1998.
The JCSO’s efforts to update its radio communications system predate McNeill’s tenure. He, however, became particularly dedicated to the effort since about 2019, when he pressed the commission to adopt an emergency resolution supporting his department’s bid for a state grant to purchase a new system. That effort, which was tied to available disaster funding from 2018’s Hurricane Michael, ultimately failed.
The department next tried to get the funding from other sources, including a federal grant, on which Langton Consulting and NextEra collaborated.
The effort to secure the funding from the Florida Legislature developed late in 2020, with the commission identifying the replacement of the system as its top legislative priority in the upcoming 2021 spring session. This latter effort proved successful, and the county awarded the funding in June.