FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Police and fire chiefs in Broward County have voted to yank responsibility for emergency radio communications from Broward County, after the county's failure to fix a broken system that impeded the response to the Parkland school shooting.
Associations of fire and police chiefs took the vote, which is not binding, to shift the system to the Broward Sheriff's Office, according to presentations Wednesday at a meeting of the state commission investigating the Parkland massacre.
"We think that the system is in such dire straits that this is the best solution to the problem," Sunrise Police Chief Tony Rosa told the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission.
Members of the commission described the failure to fix the communications system as a grave threat to public safety and said they were frustrated at the inability of local officials to address a well-known and longstanding obstacle to the delivery of life-saving services.
"I throw my hands up," said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission. "I rarely find things that I can't fix. This ain't fixable the way it is. It's a mess."
The county has been struggling to fix an antiquated system that was crippled trying to respond to two mass casualty incidents: The January 2017 shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport where five people were killed and the February 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staff were killed and 17 injured.
During the school shooting, some officers resorted to using hand signals to communicate with each other when they couldn't get through on their radios.
The 27-year-old system has long been overdue for replacement, having suffered from reliability and efficiency problems so severe that some cities refused to join and others are threatening to pull out.
The system experienced a one-hour failure May 26 that limited emergency communications. Officers were pulled off the road and ordered to reserve radio use to emergencies only, forcing them to stop any work beyond responding to urgent calls, said Gualtieri, who said he obtained that information through conversations with Broward police chiefs.
"Cities without cops on the street doing proactive policing is not good, and cops responding to calls with limited communications is bad and potentially dangerous," he said.
Gualtieri said plans for replacing the system have fallen even further behind. A new system that was expected to be completed this year now won't be operational until 2021 under the best of circumstances, he said.
He said the current situation can't continue because "everybody's just fighting with each other."
The county owns and maintains the system, and the sheriff's office staffs it. The responsibility for replacing the system has rested with the county, which appropriated the money but has not been able to get the job done. The system serves 29 of 31 cities in the county for police, firefighters and paramedics.
Gualtieri told commission members a turf war has gone on for years between the different agencies, making them unable to come to agreement on how best to handle the communications system.
"We may have stumbled onto the one thing that works less well than the Broward County school district today," said Ryan Petty, a commission member whose daughter Alaina, 14, was killed at the Parkland school.
The delay in getting the radio system operational stems from some cities objecting to the locations of 325-foot radio towers needed for the new radio system. Hollywood commissioners Wednesday night will vote on a tower site in West Lake Park, which they have been opposed to, that the county said is the best alternative.
Gualtieri said even if Hollywood approves the site location _ and residents opposed to the site don't file a lawsuit challenging the decision _ it would still be a year-and-a-half before the system would be ready.
"Every day that this system is not replaced, there is a public safety and officer safety issues here in Broward," said Gualtieri, who is sheriff of Pinellas County.
The Broward County Police Chief's Association last week voted to recommend control of the system be switched from Broward County administrators to the Broward Sheriff's Office.
Coral Springs Fire Chief Frank Babinec said 19 of 20 fire chiefs in the county also support the switch, as long as the agencies have a voice in the decisions that are made.
One of the commission members, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, said he spoke on phone with Sheriff Greg Tony during a meeting break, who said he was committed to involving the other agencies if a change occurred.
"He told me clearly. You will be a decision-maker at the table with voting authority," Judd told Babinec.
Sunrise Police Chief Tony Rosa said the police chiefs had reservations about giving more control to the Sheriff's Office, but they want the system run by people who understand the needs of law enforcement and not technocrats guided by statistics.
Rosa mentioned one suggestion from the county to increase efficiency by combining a Sunrise police channel with a Lauderhill police channel overnight because of the reduced transmissions during that time. What the statistics don't show is that Lauderhill tends to have more serious crimes than Sunrise and that when critical incidents occur, all transmissions stop to clear the airwaves to handle the incident.
"By doing this (change), Lauderhill will effectively shut down the Sunrise Police Department at night," Rosa said.
Petty said the individual agencies need a larger say in the management of the radio system.
"I look at you as the customer in this," Petty said. "What you need to do your job should be at the top of the priority list for the county."
The MSD Commission will also hear from Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry.
The county consolidated its regional communications system in 2014, with the Sheriff's Office and all cities except Coral Springs and Plantation participating. Gualtieri said instead of moving toward greater consolidation, the system is starting to fray.
Margate and Coconut Creek are now planning to leave the system, Margate Police Chief Jonathon Shaw told the commission.
The system isn't just old. It's also overloaded with too much non-emergency communications. School district bus drivers are still on the radio system, although they are expected to be on a separate local government radio system when classes resume in August.
County officials say the total cost of the new radio system is $80 million and part of a $335 million overall county investment since the consolidation of Emergency 911 into a regional system in 2014.
