A Sheriff's Department radio system isn't working properly after more than four years of service, causing tens of thousands of deputy calls to go unheard and delaying many more calls, sheriff's officials say.

Now, with a $92 million bond issue on the line for a much larger regional radio communications system serving nearly 30 public safety agencies, the older system has become a selling point for the new system's supporters.

But it has also become a flash point for critics, who say the Sheriff's Department failed to properly hold its contractor accountable for the current system's failings and now wants to be "bailed out."

Voters will decide May 18 on the $92 million radio system. It is part of Question 3 that would spend $183 million for public safety and justice facilities.

Supporters of the regional system say it is essential in part because the old sheriff's radio system is unsafe for deputies who rely on it daily to convey emergency warnings.

"We don't have a choice," said sheriff's Deputy Chris Rogers, who works out of the Catalina Foothills. "The public cannot stay with the system we have. It's a hindrance to officers' safety.

"There are entire neighborhoods in the county with no reception," he said. "More often than not with this system, a deputy has to take a radio off the belt and hold it up in the air to get reception."

For safety reasons, he can't disclose these neighborhoods, said Rogers, a steward for the Pima County Deputy Sheriff's Association. He knows of two instances in which the radio system crashed, forcing deputies to return to a substation to respond to calls because the substation couldn't reach them, he said.

"I work a minimum 40 hours a week, and not a day goes by that at least once I don't pick up the mic, key the mic, and get nothing," Rogers said.

Today, more than 1,200 times weekly and more than 62,000 times a year, department calls don't reach any of their intended recipients, reach only some recipients or get through partially, according to a September 2003 position paper from Sheriff Clarence Dupnik promoting the new, regional radio system.

While 62,000 yearly calls is less than 1 percent of all department radio calls, it's still too many failures, department officials say.

"Although there are several key technical deficiencies that make up our justification for a replacement system for public safety, this single appalling fact is justification enough," Dupnik wrote. "It is unconscionable that 62,816 times per year our emergency responders experience ineffectual communications."

The system also fails to allow deputies to reach one another within 0.75 of a second, as the county's contract requires, sheriff's officials say. Typically, such a call takes about 0.9 of a second, Dupnik has said.

In 1999, the county paid $2.8 million for the current system to contractor E.F. Johnson Co. of Waseeka, Minn. County officials had feared its existing system would fail at the start of 2000 because of Y2K compliance problems.

To get the money, the department dipped into a 1997 bond issue that was set aside for a new jail and into the county general fund, with approval of the Board of Supervisors in 1999.

But today, critics complain that the department accepted the system - knowing it wasn't working properly - and got only a 5 percent price reduction from the contractor.

Jim Needham of Oro Valley is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who taught civil-disturbance training while in the military. He hasn't decided how to vote on the public safety bond but sees a big problem with it.

"I think we're rewarding screwups, aren't we? If I do something and it's wrong, are you going to bail me out?" he asked.

Mike Powell, chairman of the deputy sheriff's association, said he also doesn't know how he'll vote on the new bond, but that it's difficult to get other deputies to "jump on board and fly that flag, because of the track record we've seen and experienced." He said the department "absolutely needs a new system."

E.F. Johnson officials, meanwhile, expressed surprise at Dupnik's comments. "They seem to be political in nature," said Jim Stark, a company spokesman.

Not only did the county accept the system, it has bought another $250,000 worth of portable and hand-held radios from Johnson since December, Stark said last week.

"Do they believe that every call should go through, every time it's made?" Stark said. "No manufacturer or provider of a system will guarantee you 100 percent coverage, 100 percent of the time. I don't want this to come across as crass, but you get what you pay for."

While the county has kept buying radios from Johnson, they are for other departments that don't need a system for emergencies, said Dan Anderson, the county's fleet services director. Five other departments besides the Sheriff's Department use the current radio system. The department will turn the entire system over to other county agencies if the bond passes.

Department officials knew early on that the current radio system wasn't working as it was supposed to, memos and letters show. Dupnik and other department officials say today that they had no choice but to buy the Johnson system because the only other bidder at the time refused to guarantee a system that would work after Jan. 1, 2000. That was Erickson Co., which had designed the department's then-15-year-old radio system and had offered to upgrade it.

After 2 1/2 years of working with Johnson officials to improve the new system, department officials said last week, they concluded that no additional improvements were possible because of limits in the system's design.

The county accepted the Johnson system in fall 2002. It saved $144,000 out of a final $288,000 payment, gaining a 5 percent price break for the entire contract.

To reject the system would have left the Sheriff's Department without a workable radio network, Sheriff's Capt. Paul Wilson said last week. The county couldn't take a stronger position because the 1999 contract left some issues about the system's operations open to interpretation, Wilson said.

A lawsuit to recover more money would have been time-consuming and could have failed, a deputy county attorney said. "It was my assessment that the likelihood of winning that lawsuit did not justify taking the shot at the amount of money left on that contract," said David Berkman, then a deputy in the County Attorney's Office civil division, now the criminal-division chief.

Now, sheriff's officials said they have learned from the problems, and will ensure that the new system works better.

Five years ago, the county didn't have the time or resources to investigate a new system more thoroughly, Wilson said: "We literally had our backs up against the wall."

Deputy Rogers agreed with critics that the department didn't handle the last system properly, but said he has to believe it has learned its lesson.

But another deputy said he would vote against the new radio system if he could separate it from the rest of Question 3, which he supports.

That's even though the current system frustrates him so much that he sometimes feels like throwing his radio against the wall and sending up smoke signals, said Deputy Al Williams, who patrols the Three Points area.

"I have seen people get so mad at the radio that they do throw it. I've told my wife if something happens to me because of the radio system, she is going to be a rich widow."

The current system doesn't work south of Milepost 32 along Arizona 286 in the Altar Valley, causing him to regularly avoid the area even though it's a corridor for drug runners, said Williams, a deputy association steward.

"I've been in government service 32 years. I've seen government contract after government contract after government contract, and governments don't learn," Williams said last week. "I'm not convinced we'll get anything better than what we've got."

Arizona Daily Star

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2004

Answers

Pima County Sheriff's radio system called inadequate

Twenty different law enforcement agencies gathered at Davis Monthan Air Force Base Saturday to educate the public on tools of their trade that save lives, but there's one tool deputies say is putting lives at risk.

Pima County Sheriff Department says their radio system is in bad shape.

Sergeant James Ogden says, "We do have a lot of dropped calls, lost transmissions. There are situations where officers call in and they don't get the immediate response that they should."

Dispatchers estimate they have 1000 dropped calls a week.

That could all change if voters approve bond question number three.

At a cost of $92 million, it would replace the Pima County Sheriff's radio system as well as those of 9 other police agencies, and 19 fire districts. That also includes the city's radio system that's so old, you can't even buy parts for it anymore.

With the purcahse of a unified radio system, everyone would be able to speak on the same frequency.

Sgt. Ogden says right now, "If there's a major incident where we have to band together to protect the citizens of Pima County, it's real hard because we can't communicate together. This would solve that problem."

Some may question giving the county more money for radios. Just four years ago they spent $3.7 million on a system that turned out to be faulty.

Pima County Sheriff's department says they weren't able to purchase a better system, because manufacturers couldn't promise it would make it through Y2K.

The department was forced to purchase a less expensive system that did make it through the 2000 New Year. But, it's been plaguing the Department ever since.

There are six bond questions to be decided on May 18th.

KVOA

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2004