"The best quality, the best signal and the clearest voice is always going to be digital," said Plainview police chief Ken Coughlin.
A few years ago, the Plainview police department received a grant from Homeland Security to purchase state-of-the-art radios for officers. However, infrastructure within the City of Plainview radio tower only allowed the officers the option of using the analog feature on the radios.
That was the case up until last week when the city's technology was finally converted to handle the digital capabilities. This meant new antennas, among other things..
"(These radios) came with the capacity to be analog or digital, but the infrastructure we had for the city was analog only. So we were using these, but at the lower end of their capacity," said Coughlin.
Coughlin said the radios take an analog signal and transfer it into data that is sent to the receiver. Once the data arrives, it is coded back to voice on the other end.
"It's a lot sharper, a lot clearer and has a better signal coverage," Coughlin said.
And better coverage was something Plainview police needed to address as the analog signal created dead spots in a number of locations in the community.
"We had about 65 percent coverage in the city," Coughlin said. "The signal wouldn't reach back to the bay station and to the computers. You were dead in the water. You can't communicate with the rest of the city."
Also, weak signals sent on analog were often garbled and could not be understood.
Along with the clear sound and coverage, the digital radios also have panic buttons and the capability to inform dispatch which officer and radio are communicating back to headquarters.
"Before, if an officers was talking to us, we didn't know what officer was talking to us. Right now, once I key up this mic and it lights up, dispatch can see who's talking," Coughlin said.
"Another positive thing for the community is this, the bad guys who had scanners won't hear the dispatch like before."
Coughlin said old analog scanners will not pick up digital signals.
Officers can switch back to analog if they need to communicate with neighboring emergency personnel. However, amongst Plainview police, the communication will be digital.
"We have caught a lot of thieves with scanners in their hands, because they listen to when we are busy and they say, 'this is the time to hit,'" said Coughlin. "They can hear us coming."
Coughlin said the clearer talk and coverage will greatly increase officer safety.
But technology is continuing to improve even in officer communication.
"Even this won't be around forever," Coughlin said.
The police chief said in the future, departments will have to join the United States Government information system OneNet.
"It gets completely out of this technology and is something more comparable to a cell phone type technology," Coughlin said.
Until then, Coughlin said, they are happy with the improved technology for officers.
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