Okay. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER AYERS: It was basically some intermittent transmissions, which was spoken about earlier by Commissioner Brennan.
Who makes the decision not to go to the back-up, to the back-up system? I know it was made. Is it a joint decision between Police and Fire when you stick with the primary system and not the back-up system? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER AYERS: Mike, you can answer that.
Yes. As has been stated, the City system is comprised of two independent identical but interconnected type 98 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 of systems. We reside on System A, the Fire Department. If there was a total systemwide failure on A, then we would make notification where the system management, being Public Property, would know about it and we would then migrate to the B system. But that's a natural path of migration that would take place.
So that is your back-up system, is to migrate over to B?
That is the final solution, yes. In regards to this past weekend, the unit that malfunctioned actually affected both systems. The effect it had on Fire was very minimal. On Saturday from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., we had maybe ten instances, and at midnight Saturday going into Sunday from 12:00 to 1:00 a.m., we had about 11 or 12 instances. And the effect itself was an audio fluctuation in a transmission where the audio would drop until a word or two would be clipped from a transmission. To adjust, the dispatchers 99 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 would have to simply ask the unit to repeat the transmission. That is the effect that Commissioner Ayers was referring to as the Fire Department being affected. If I could in response to Dave from Local 22's comments, the Fire Department since going operational in October of '02 has encouraged our members, our users, to report any instances of reception problems or diminished reception, coverage problems, and that is in the form of a memorandum, which Dave spoke to. That memorandum is forwarded to the Fire Communication Center's Fire Survey Unit where it's investigated, and if validated or substantiated, then it's turned over to the 800 megahertz team, the management, the Department of Public Property. Since going online in October of 2002, I've received about approximately 30 reports of reception issues. In most cases when investigated, these turn out to be user-related issues or training issues. For instance, the bonk. The bonk indicates a talk group busy, which means someone else is 100 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 talking. The new system is intelligent enough where it is telling the user that someone else is talking. In the old system that we used, there were such things as busies. The fact of the matter is, you didn't know you were being busied out. You just talked and the system didn't notify you of that. When you are out of range with the new system, the system will give you a steady tone. In the old system, you could be out of range very easily and not know it. So some of these effects that are being described as nuisances or dangers are things that did, in fact, exist and probably existed to a much larger degree in the old system, but the user simply wasn't aware of it.
Could you comment on the issue of coverage where the fire operations are switching over to an analog system? Are you aware that they're required to do that or is it an issue -- fire fighting is a bit different than the rest of 101 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 the world where you get to a location, you can't monitor or know wherever you're going to have coverage issues. So I guess the alternative when there is no digital coverage is to switch to the -- I guess it's a duplex system or simplex system?
Exactly. It's a conventional duplex, radio to radio, walkie-talkie, yes, sir.
So that's good supervision in the field, because if you're not able to communicate on your primary system, that's your only alternative, to go to the duplex system, but I would think that when they encounter that kind of an issue, that it is reported so you can address that specific geographic area of why you're not getting penetration in that particular location.
You're exactly correct, Councilman. And we designed Fire's system due to the nature of the business we do. We do a lot more operational-type things inside buildings, and if due to the physical characteristics of the building, it's densely 102 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 constructed, the systemwide channel may not be effective. So we equipped our system with three analog radio-to-radio simplex channels. Now, we use a systemwide channel to do fire ground communications because of the emergency activation feature. We feel that's important. But if upon arrival on a fire ground it is determined that there is signal degradation to the point of negative -- there's a negative effect on communications, then the Incident Commander has the latitude to switch the internal communications on the fire ground over to an analog channel.
I understand there's technology that can actually be brought to a scene that has poor coverage that could enhance the signal, like a suit case. Is there technology like that that you could have in the event you ran into -- let's say you had a major incident and you had no 22 Citywide coverage. Is there a portable device that could be brought to the scene to help correct the coverage issue?
That has been 103 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 explored. We have asked that question, okay, and it's one that we have not gotten an answer back as of yet. We've had some diminished receptions at at least two high-rise fires that I could think of and we brought the question of the high-rise fire to the City's team and the City's consultant, radio engineering consultant, RCC. I don't know if there's a digital repeater portable radio that is on the market yet, but we have raised the question of diminished reception in high-rises and asked for a response or a solution.
Thank you. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER AYERS: I wanted to add one other thing to the simplex channel. When we actually switch on the fire ground to that channel, one of the things that 104 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 happens as far as the emergency button is that it is not completely disabled. One of the instructions that go along with that order from the Incident Commander is that we will have the aide monitoring the simplex channel, because if that button is pressed, we still get the readout, we still know exactly which radio was affected, just to let you know.
Commissioner, I appreciate that, but for the investment that this City made, I want to make sure that our fire fighters have the ultimate maximum protection. I understand that there are issues of coverage, but, again, we want this system to work the way it was designed. And, again, if we have coverage issues, we really need to address them, but it's not acceptable that we can't communicate on a Citywide digital frequency in a high-rise building, especially when we're in the upper floors. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER AYERS: Okay. I appreciate that.
Thank you, 105 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 sir.
Do you want them all back together? John McFadden from Motorola, will you please approach the table as well.
If there's anyone else on your team that you need to bring, bring them, please. MR. McFADDEN: Good afternoon, Councilmen. I welcome the opportunity to present Motorola's participation with the City system today. With me I have my Engineering Manager, Mary Beth Krantz. She's the head of engineering for the Motorola Northern Division. Also with me I have the Project Manager for the Philadelphia project, Melissa Hanlon. Melissa has been involved in this project for almost six years. At this current time, there are four 106 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 people that are dedicated, that are assigned full time to the City of Philadelphia to monitor the system. They're technicians that are basically on call for this system as a system manager. One of the things I think I'd like to say at this time is that there is in Chicago a monitoring center. It's like a war room. And in that monitoring center, they're watching the Philadelphia system electronically. They can literally -- all your sites are being monitored for alarms, any critical path, like a microwave path. So people are sitting there and when an alarm goes off, that means there's something happening in your system and they can literally see that. A lot of times what happens is, they see something, an alarm goes off, we dispatch technicians and the modification is made and nobody even sees that that happened. It's almost what we would consider to be normal maintenance. In this particular incident, the 107 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 incidents that we're discussing today, we put most of the power of the Northern Division engineering resources into this and all our resources out of our headquarters in Chicago. We have the architects that originally designed this system involved in troubleshooting this. We have our software engineers. We brought people out here from our factory to look at the system as it stands. We have also put together in our lab a system that looks just like your system, and the reason we did that is, we want to test it under stress in a lab. One of the issues I thought earlier I heard was that why is this taking four months. One of the things we want to do in a live system is, it's a live system. You cannot put a live system -- we do not want to put a live system under stress. So in our laboratories, we have your system set up. We are loading the computer up and stressing it constantly for the last month. We got another at least month worth of doing that to see if 108 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 we can duplicate some of the issues that we saw here. That's the resources that we have brought to this account. We're extremely concerned as a company about the situation in Philadelphia and we want to make sure that this customer is served extremely well. And I believe we have put in the resources to do that. I brought my Engineering Manager and my Project Manager here today so we can answer your questions, and I'll be happy to take any questions.
Real quick, Councilman. In your written testimony you make several references to the May 18th situation. Maybe I'm reading too quickly, but I don't see any references to the March 25th and -- MR. McFADDEN: There were a couple instances I did not address in the testimony. Specifically, we addressed the May 109 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 18th, but we intend to answer any questions about any incidents that you'd like to talk about.
The March issue is over a month older than the -- or two months older almost than the May issue, and in terms of time, I mean, at some point it's extremely long. I don't know where the line is that you draw on how long is it taking to fix this. But the March incident is four months old and yet there's no sign-off by Motorola that we're ready to go back to the Announcement Group function, and it seems to me to be a key part of the whole system. MR. McFADDEN: We do have a modification that we believe corrects that problem. We've tested the modification in our lab in Chicago. The issue really is when do we want to put this live on the system so that the Police Department and everybody involved in the City is comfortable that we do that. We're suggesting that we do that on a quiet day at 4:00 in the morning, that we bring this in and we turn it on and we stress it. 110 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 We do not want to do this at any time that there is even the remotest potential that something will happen. So there's a caution both from the City side and our side on when exactly do we bring this back up. And we are not interested in having any other events of this type. So that's really -- it's not a delay that we don't know what the issue is. It's more of a case do we want to stress the system and are we very, very, very comfortable that when we do this, that we don't have another incident.
So your solution has been in place, your prepared solution? MR. McFADDEN: Yes.
It's just a matter of -- I don't want to say pull the trigger, not with this crowd here, but actually making it real and -- MR. McFADDEN: Going live.
And having it tested in the real world. MR. McFADDEN: Yeah, in the 111 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 real world. I tried to explain to you, the difficulty -- this is, as you're very well aware, a public safety system. This is not something you can -- it's not like Verizon can shut you down for an hour and do something and change some software. This thing is live. It's running every day. It's an area of expertise that we have. We know how to manage and maintain these police systems, and you cannot do anything that puts the system at risk inadvertently. So that is the caution. It's not a case that we don't know what we need to do.
How long have you had this ready to go given the right circumstances, the 4:00 in the morning call since March 25th? MR. McFADDEN: I'll ask Melissa that.
Actually, the modification that we identified was put in place approximately the first week of April, and we did demonstrate to the City, to the 112 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 Police Department that the Announcement Group worked, but as Mr. McFadden said, it has not been stress-tested and until it has been stress-tested with the City and the Police Department, they do not feel comfortable using it in a triple assist situation. Our goal is to test this out with the City at the appropriate time, and that time has not been selected yet.
So this isn't a problem for Motorola at this point. Motorola is trying to fix it, thinks they've got the solution. At some point the Police Department has to stress-test this. And if the solution that Motorola recommends that's going to work has been in place since the first week in April, our problem isn't with Motorola, our questions aren't for Motorola. MR. McFADDEN: Well, there's another --
Our questions are for the City side. What is taking so long if this is critical to our most critical police radio function, the triple 113 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 assist or the assist officer in the first place? Mr. James, could you take a shot at that? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: I'll try to answer your question, Councilman.
Because you got to do it, unless you're just going to say $60 million, forget the most important function of our most important function, we're not going to ever use it. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: No, I'm not saying that.
At some point you got to try it. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: Yes, we do. And I think we were planning to try it. We're taking the lead from the Police Department, because it's basically going to impact their operations, and to the point where they were comfortable that this Announcement Group was changed, that Motorola's planning was going to work, we were waiting for the Police Department to really be 114 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 in a position, along with us, to be able to tell Motorola go ahead and do that, and before we had -- it did take some time -- the May incident occurred. Since the May incident occurred, not clear exactly if we resolved that problem, it didn't make sense for us to now add another component back into the system, because we need to find out what happened on the May 18th more than we do about the March 25th incident. So we have not asked them to change anything because we want to try to test what we understand to be the current environment and which caused the incident on the 18th.
Do you know why -- the police are here, so I can ask them, but do you know why from the first week in April we hadn't tested this until the third week in May when Situation 2 happened when Motorola wasn't going to change the recommendation? This was what they felt was going to work. Why wouldn't it have been tested within a very short period of time or put under stress, or whatever the proper 115 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 terminology is? Why four, five weeks when it affects such an important part of our public safety system? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: I can't answer that question for you.
Can I ask Commissioner Brennan on that one? That to me is a key issue, unless I'm not understanding some of the factual parts of this. Commissioner -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: No. I understand the question.
I want to make sure that I'm clear on the record. You have a problem with the Announcement Group function that affects your triple assist situation. It's been put into the system for that. It has a separate channel. All that has been planned. It breaks down in March on the 25th. A week later or so Motorola says, You're going to have to stress-test this, but we think this is going to work. These are the same people that we are relying on the whole system for for 116 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 upwards of many millions of dollars. And at some point, we have to do this o'clock in 4 the morning thing. What would take us even to the end of April, let alone May 18th, not to have done it? What would have prevented us from doing it when it's so important to have it -- and we got to do it sometime or we're just going to forget about it, and I hope we're not going to forget about it based on how important it's been explained, how important this function is. Could you explain why just the window between the first week in April and May 18th? I can understand Mr. James saying, Now we got this other problem and, God, you already got one, you don't want to put too much in this pot. But we only had one in the pot up to May 18th. Could you explain that over-a-month situation where we didn't stress-test it? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Councilman, after the March 25th incident we were extremely wary, even though Motorola told 117 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 us that they had fixed it. And really it was my decision, mine alone, not to use that function again, despite Motorola's assurances that it would work, until it was stress-tested. That was mine and mine alone. That test was actually scheduled for May 20th. May 20th in the early morning hours, just as you said, that's when we do this, like 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. We had that test scheduled and then May 18th happened. So when May 18th happened, that sort of made us step back, because we weren't sure now at this point are these problems somehow related.
I understand after May 18th. I understand. Commissioner James explained that very well. You were just hesitant to even rely on Motorola's recommendation that this is going to work? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Motorola said it would work, but --
This is 118 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 the first week in April situation. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Right. Except we were just really concerned what would happen if it didn't work.
But what was it that changed from the first week in April when you weren't comfortable testing it and the scheduling it for May 20th decision? So there was an initial decision not to do it or not to do it yet. Motorola is not changing anything. They've already made their recommendation. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Right.
What was it that gave you the confidence to stress-test it on the 20th, even though you never got to do that? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: It sounds like a long time, but when we test this, as Mr. McFadden said, we test it live. In every other computer system that I have, there's always a test side. If you blow something up, it really doesn't matter. 119 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 In this case, there's no test system. It's live. In order to test a system of this magnitude, there's a lot of resources that have to be brought in and coordinated. It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen if we're not comfortable. For example, we want to do something right now. We've postponed it three times because we're not comfortable that we have the resources in place to do it. And we are at the point now that if we're not comfortable, we always put it off. So I'll tell you, I know it seems like a long time.
Could you describe the resources that are needed? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: I think probably Motorola can describe better, because I see what happens on my end in radio. In other words, I have the radio people there, but I know they have people, not only on site, but they have people off site at different places in case something should happen. 120 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655
So what would be the lead time, Commissioner? If your schedule is for May 20th, which was cancelled, I understand that, but what would have been the lead time when you would have said, Okay, Motorola, ready to test this? What would that time frame have been; in other words, the lead time before May 20th that you would have needed? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: I would say, and I think Motorola can probably tell you, we did have other things going on at this time besides that. For example, I think there was the training. We had a lot of training that was going on in the middle of this that we didn't want to interrupt, because we had significant resources with dispatcher training. There's a lot that the dispatchers had to know about the back-up systems. That was all going on between March 25th and May 20th, and we didn't want to interrupt that either.
But you said initially you weren't comfortable with 121 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 even a live test. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Right.
So at what point did you get comfortable enough to schedule it and how much lead time did you need once you got comfortable? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: I'd like to tell you, it was probably -- I probably told Motorola that we wanted to test it and it probably took us a couple weeks to bring that all in, and that's probably what led up to the May 20th date. I actually can't remember back to then.
But it took you a while to get comfortable with even the idea of putting it under stress? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Yeah, it did. And to be honest with you, I know that you understand that this is an important thing, but we kind of felt and we were comfortable that we had a work-around that was effective and that worked fine, so we did not feel that this is like a number one 122 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 priority. We did not tell Motorola drop everything and do this, because they do what we tell them. If we had told them drop everything and we want this fixed right now, they would have done it. We didn't tell them to do that, because we felt we had a comfortable work-around with the Multi-Select. The Multi-Select is working fine. So we were kind of comfortable that that gets us around the problem until we are comfortable enough to get this in and working.
You say it's working fine. It doesn't mean it's working as well as the -- what's that, the Announcement Group function. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: The Announcement Group is the only thing that we can have that we could talk to the whole City at one time.
So a lot of this is terminology, what is fine and what is optimal. Fine is more like okay. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: There's no doubt the Announcement Group is 123 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 optimal.
Optimal is more like the best. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: There's no doubt that the Announcement Group for when we have to talk to the City is the best way for us to do it.
You talk about loading the system. You're talking about officers on the street at the same 14 time able to talk back to police radio, 15 15 channels, correct, Commissioner? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: There's really 14. One channel is a control channel and 14 are opened up.
It's not really a fancy test. You're talking about having 15 people try to communicate at one time to police radio and you test the system, right? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: No. Actually, if it was only 15 people, we 124 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 could do that ourselves. And, actually, Motorola did that.
But if you told every police officer in the street on a tour of duty to key your radio, you'd be, what, 400 plus units trying to come in to police radio, and that's the test, right? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: That's exactly what I want. We actually tested the system, Motorola and our people. We actually got, I think, 10 or 15 radios and we come in and we couldn't do the stress, and I told them I didn't think that was a fair test. I want to do it with the cops on the street live. And we actually did one. We told all the cops on the street start keying your radio like it's a triple assist.
And I would assume that Motorola could develop a way to abort any significant crash of the system during that stress of the system? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: That's why it's important that everybody be in place, in case the system does have a fault, 125 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 is that they have everybody in place to make sure that we can recover very quickly. Actually, I have been pushing very strongly to try to fail the system. They are less -- they are more reluctant to do that. It has been my experience with other computer systems you try to make them fail. And I think that we may push them to the point where we want to try to make it fail, and in order to do that, I need all those 400 officers to help me.
Okay. Commissioner, I appreciate that. I want to go back to Mr. McFadden. Mr. McFadden, how many 800 megahertz radio systems do you have in public safety? I know that there are utility companies that use them. Let's just talk about public safety now. How many systems do you have in service? MR. McFADDEN: Around the country, hundreds.
How many? MR. McFADDEN: I don't know exactly. Just from this location, 126 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 Philadelphia, Montgomery County, State of Delaware, all the counties surrounding Washington, DC, Washington itself and then down to the south, most of Florida. I don't have the exact, but it's hundreds, because we've been selling these probably now for at least ten years. The system the City has is similar to ones we've been selling for ten years. There's been changes in software, but basically they're out there.
One thing I know about technology is, you can relate it to a problem with a motor vehicle, that you call the technician and you tell him that it's doing this and they'll say, Oh, yeah, you need to get a new widget and it will fix it. Have you ever experienced this condition in any of your public safety systems? MR. McFADDEN: This particular -- which condition? Are we talking about the one on the 18th?
Let's talk 127 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 about all three of them. MR. McFADDEN: I would say the one on the 18th, the fact that the channels didn't switch over where you have channels 6 and when the computer switched over, the 7 channels didn't follow, only eight followed, 8 we haven't seen that anywhere else. That was 9 the reason for setting up the lab in Chicago, 10 to try and duplicate that particular incident. 11 So that one was unique. 12 I can't address every single issue 13 around the country, but I'm sure there's been 14 situations where -- that's why you have a 15 maintenance contract, that's why you monitor the systems, to see that -- electronic parts do wear out, they do get old and they do have issues occasionally.
The analogy that I just used when somebody said to one of your lead technicians, This is what happened, did somebody say, Yeah, this particular part failed, because we saw the same thing happen in Detroit? MR. McFADDEN: I'm sure that 128 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 happens every day at our monitoring center where something happens and say, All right, we've seen that before, I know exactly what it is. It's this, this and this. And that's when we have spare parts. We have a recommended list of spare parts. These are things that could possibly weaken. We have a rather extensive way of monitoring the systems and what parts are used, because if something starts showing up with some regularity, then we have to go address the vendor we get the part from, that if this part seems to be having problems, then there's something wrong with our quality control and maybe their quality. So we either change vendors or we get them to fix whatever it is we see. So there is a rather complex system of monitoring parts, because parts are a cost to a system. So if we've got something that looks like it's having a problem all the time, we want it out of our systems for a lot of reasons, but because it's public safety, we cannot have that happening with any 129 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 regularity. So if there's something we see, we change it right away.
I'm sure you want to comment on some of the testimony that you heard here today. MR. McFADDEN: Yes, I can.
Specifically, you mentioned the 18th, that that was unique where the channels were dropped. How about the March 25th incident? MR. McFADDEN: The March 25th, it looks like a software issue. I don't think it's that unusual to have software issues in systems that now have moved away from the conventional technology of old into the computer world. So software issues are -- over the years, yeah, they appear.
But have you had that particular problem where it's a Citywide announcement jamming? MR. McFADDEN: I'm not sure. I'd have to find out for you. That particular 130 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 problem? Because when I said we have hundreds of these systems, many cities configure them based on how they want to operate. The City of Baltimore, as an example, is configured, I'm sure, differently than the City of Philadelphia. The City of Philadelphia is bigger. It probably has more incidents, probably has more fires.
You're not aware of a specific incident in another city that's like this? MR. McFADDEN: No, but I wouldn't want to say that there's never a software issue someplace. There's always software issues.
I'm not speaking about software. MR. McFADDEN: Specifically, no, that I'm aware of today, but I can certainly double-check that for you.
What was the problem with the design of the system that we're discussing right now, the Citywide alert system? What is the problem with that and 131 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 what are you doing -- in other words, what was designed improperly out of the gate? MR. McFADDEN: I don't think it was designed improperly. What happens in computer systems is -- and maybe I should have one of our engineers answer this question rather than me.
Please. In other words, what I want to know is what went wrong with the initial --
What happened with the initial design? MR. McFADDEN: This is Mary Beth. She's our Engineering Manager.
Yes. Specifically, with regard to some of our features, that feature is set up in more than one piece of equipment. The radio actually has the Announcement Group feature in it. The 132 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 dispatcher has it in it. It also resides within our main controller. There are different parameters that you can set in each of those devices, and you have to reach the optimal choices of all those parameters. We changed one of those parameters for the Philadelphia system, which we think is going to alleviate the issue going forward.
So the parameters may not have been set as well as they could have been?
So -- MR. McFADDEN: I don't know if that was -- I guess all the devices have that piece of software in it, and I think when all the devices start sending information into the main computer, that it has a tendency to almost start overloading it away. I mean, that's maybe a simpler way of explaining that. The computer then sees an awful lot of signals coming in from multiple places and 133 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 it starts loading the cue, basically starts getting loaded, loaded, loaded. The reason you have back-up and back-up computers is just for that, for the incident that something like that happens and now the thing automatically switches because now I've got too much stuff stacked up in this first computer. It goes to the second one and I start fresh with fresh information. So maybe that's probably a layman's description of what was happening.
That's good. I watch this whole process very carefully, because I have a real interest in our public safety communications. I heard you say something earlier that got my attention, or someone said it. I believe it was you. I'm not sure. This is not your typical Motorola 800 trunking radio system installation here in the City of Philadelphia. We have a tendency to do that in this City. We can't even buy a trash truck that resembles the rest of the world. We have to have a Philadelphia design on almost 134 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 everything we do here. Is the design that you were handed to build and install so complicated or so unique that it's creating some of these problems? MR. McFADDEN: No, I don't believe that. I think the designs for these systems in Philadelphia is typical of a police environment, that there is procedures, operational procedures, in place. They're how you manage your police force, and every city manages them the same, but a little bit differently. That really drives how you configure your police radio system, how you manage your officers, how you respond to an assist officer in a city, how you do all those things. Every city wants a certain amount of redundancy. In the City of Philadelphia, you actually have five levels of redundancy. We do not have very many systems that have five levels of redundancy. That's very good. There are cities that we don't think possibly have enough redundancy, but Philadelphia has 135 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 five levels. So that's the difference. I don't think the system was overengineered. I think it's driven by how you originally set up, how the city is set up and how the patterns of operation. So I wouldn't say that somebody was trying to do something crazy.
But someone did mention earlier that some of the things that this package has is kind of different than the norm. MR. McFADDEN: Well, I wouldn't call it the norm. The basic system is the same. Everybody puts their own kind of configuration in.
Could you explain the redundancy levels, levels of redundancy, why it's better to have more? MR. McFADDEN: Well, when something terrible happens, that's when you really need all this redundancy that you've got built into this system. The fact that the computer dumped over -- overloaded and dumped over into a back-up, it's great the back-up 136 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 was there. You have a system if something really terrible happened, you could go to that police back-up, then you could go to the fire, to the fire back-up, and the last stop is something that's built into all our systems, it's called Fail Soft, which means if all the computers fail, your officers can still talk the way they used to talk years ago. 10 So it's just a matter of how much 11 redundancy a city can afford, and with the 12 change -- with the world that's changed the 13 way it has, a lot of cities are looking now at 14 what they have and how they're backed up and 15 how they interoperate. 16 You had asked me earlier about do I 17 have -- the only comment I had about the 18 testimony was that I was very involved in New 19 York City. I understand their systems in 20 depth, that the people that were working with New York for the last ten years were people on my team. They do not have an 800 megahertz system in the police and fire in New York City. In fact, what they have is what you 137 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 used to have. The Fire Department in New York City had a high-band radio system like you used to have with two or three channels and that's it. So that's the only piece of testimony that I'd like to comment on, that we were kind of -- I think there's a lot of misinformation, because New York City does have a police UHF system -- a VHS system for fire, they do have a 800 megahertz system. It's for public, but what you would call public property. So I just really wanted to correct that. See, they had what you had and they're trying to buy what you have, I guess is probably -- so I think you're a little ahead of the game in that regard as far as redundancy and as far as coverage and as far as being able to communicate and identify officers that have the ID that you have in this system.
Could you please -- and, again, we've been at this for a while now. Could you just possibly discuss 138 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 some of the operational aspects of your system that you heard here today, about some of the complaints from the officers about coverage, about the fact that -- how simply to describe it is if there's an officer in trouble and they don't want to push the panic button and you hear that there's some criticism heading their way if they use that feature. Is it -- and, again, you're right, we had a 400 megahertz radio system that worked very well and I think, matter of fact, there are probably some cities that wish, maybe New York, that they had our old 400 meg system that was very, very effective where our officers could hear each other. I think they called them voting receivers, where they would be able to hear each other's conversations back and forth, and I believe they can still hear that today. And I agree that there is an adjustment in coming to this new technology, and I think that one of the points that I thought was good that the Fire Department made, that maybe we didn't know when we were 139 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 using the old system that we were having some of the coverage issues or we were out of range or whatever. And this system is better, that it makes us aware of every little issue, like the fact that you can't get through. You didn't know it on the old system. But could you talk about, just for a minute, some of the complaints that we're getting? Again, this is one of the hottest issues that we have had. Is this typical when there's a transition -- I'm asking this of Motorola -- to one of your systems, the complaints that we're getting from the field? Is that also occurring in other cities that you have your systems? MR. McFADDEN: I would say when we move from the old technology, the conventional technology, to the trunk technology -- and, by the way, the FCC is going to pretty much mandate in the next couple of years anyway that you move to digital, because they're not going to allow the building of any other gear that's not digital I think in 2008. So everybody is 140 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 going to these digital platforms. What has happened -- this is not unique. Any system that's had an old conventional system, there was always a feeling of comfort by the -- and I won't speak of Philadelphia officers, but just around the country, of the fact that, Yeah, I know somebody is already talking, but I'm going to start talking over him and I'm going to keep pressing this thing and hope that I blast them off the air. And that gives people the sense that at least I'm doing something, even though in fact what they were many times doing is actually interfering with maybe another critical conversation going on over here. So there's always been the feeling of officers when you switch to the new technology, that at least in the old one I could keep backing that thing. The results are the same. Nobody is going to hear you because you're interfering with each other. So that is not unusual, that when you come in with a new system, that a lot of training has to be done. It can't be done 141 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 quickly. It really is a cultural change. And I can't address specifically what these officers are hearing in the street. I don't know what they're hearing, but that is typical around the country. When you move from an older system that has limited functions -- because what happens, everybody forgets that the old system had a ton of problems. And I don't mean just here, I mean everywhere. When you have a system that's years old, you have all kinds 13 of problems that you've learned to live with. 14 You literally know that I can't talk at 15 Kensington and Allegheny, so I don't even try. 16 I drive another block.
17 Well, with the new system, you get 18 there, you get to a spot, you can probably 19 talk there, but maybe three feet later you get 20 a bonk, at least you know you can't talk. So 21 there's a lot of things people -- I mean, it's 22 almost a memory -- you forget how bad the old 23 system was and now we address what we have 24 now. And that's how things keep getting 25 better and keep getting better. 142 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 So it's usually somewhat of a cultural change, a training issue, but it is a real issue. It is not something I'm saying nobody has had this. Everybody has had the same kind of issues when you make those kinds of changes, because the comfort level changes even though -- I heard earlier that you had the radios in the cars, which is great, but if in the old system you didn't have a portable radio, you were running down the street and something happens --
They had both. They had the hand-held and the fixed radio. MR. McFADDEN: But a lot of cities, everybody didn't have both. There are a few --
In Philadelphia pretty much we did. MR. McFADDEN: So that's basically it. When you go through those kind of changes, it's a cultural change. And then if there are some incidents like we had here, then it tightens up a little bit and it's 143 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 just -- you need to go back out, reaffirm what we have, understand the levels of back-up that you have. We have people, like I said earlier, sitting in Chicago watching your system, literally watching it.
I understand, but, Mr. McFadden, you heard the FOP say that they --
Councilman, I think Mr. Brennan switched seats so he could address the --
I'll get to him. But, Mr. McFadden, the comfort level -- and I can tell you of listening to police radio for a lot of years, that in the old 400 megahertz radio system if an officer did depress their microphone, they could talk over, in many cases, if they were closer to the receiver or whatever the technology allowed, and at least the cars in the field could hear them hollering for help. And that's the issue that the officers on the 144 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 street are dealing with. Saying that they couldn't get through is not accurate. They could be heard in an emergency. If they decided to take the air, the dispatcher in the radio room might not have heard it, but a colleague on the street may have heard it. Today they can't do that. And that is one of the issues. And, again, I'm not saying that's bad, the system the way it's designed and how it works, but you have to understand, you've got a lot of officers for years or so have 14 been out there working with a system that did 15 a lot of things that's important to them, and 16 today what's important to them isn't 17 necessarily there. 18 MR. McFADDEN: Right. 19
Commissioner 20 Brennan? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Thank you, Councilman O'Neill, for seeing I wanted to say something. I've been hitting John in the leg. Either his leg is absolutely numb and he feels nothing or he thinks I love 145 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 him, either one. I'm not sure.
Was that a stress test? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Just a couple things with some of the complaints the FOP brought in. Actually, the issues that we're addressing today, the issues in March and May, actually as Bob Eddis will tell you, we've had complaints since the day this went up, but I will tell you this: Before the first radio was in the first officer's hands, we knew we were going to get complaints. Their complaints largely, if you look at all their complaints they -- let's take the batteries aside, because I'll address that separately so you understand what happened with the batteries. The officers don't like two things about this system. They don't like them now and they'll never like them. And those two things are -- the first thing they don't like is, in the old system when you pushed the button, you could talk right away. Right now you have to get permission to talk. It's 146 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 called a grant tone. It takes about a little less than a half a second. They don't like that. They don't like to have to wait to talk. So we knew that that was going to be a problem, and that was a big, big resistance factor. But that's not the number one thing they don't like. The number one thing they don't like is not being able to talk over one other. They really, really hate that. If you really look at all the complaints that we get, that is really at the heart of almost all of them. What the officers really don't understand is that --
We couldn't have a City Council meeting if we weren't allowed to talk over each other. I can understand the frustration. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: What the officers really never understood -- and really I worked under the old system for many years, so I know how it worked -- is that the system rigorously enforces that one person can talk at a time. Actually, the dispatchers 147 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 love it. They can fully hear every officer very clearly now, unlike before. In an emergency situation is when this comes up all the time, is that in the old system, the dispatcher would hear a lot of garbling, screaming and garbling. They really couldn't figure out what was going on. What they would say is, One at a time, one at a time. You know, let's find out who is -- and then they'd all try to talk again, and there would be all this garbling again. What happens now is, and Bob Eddis referred to it, when we first put the radios out, we referred to that little button that he told you about -- I don't know if anybody has got a radio here. It's a little orange button up top. We referred to it as an assist button. We realized right away that was a mistake, because it sort of indicated that the only time you push that is when there's an assist. So we've changed that now. We try to educate them. It's more like when you got to have the air. In an emergency, you have a priority 148 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 or an emergency, you push the button and you get priority over everybody else. That is actually a safety feature which we never had before. It takes a while for the officers to understand that and to use that. They actually are learning, believe it or not. The only other thing I'll disagree with President Eddis, and believe me, I got the highest respect for him and I know we've had a lot of conversations about this, is he said the officers embrace new technology. I find them to be a very tough sell. I find them to be a really tough audience. I think the learning curve for this system is going to be real steep. I anticipated that from the beginning, and we in radio sort of knew that. So those two issues are really at the heart of why they don't like this thing. Let me just talk about the coverage issues. The reason that Bob gets a lot of complaints, and I know this, is that although we've opened up to them, is a lot of times they're afraid to come to us. I don't know, 149 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 maybe they're afraid they'll get in trouble. And I've brought this up to Bob and I told him nobody ever gets in trouble for making a complaint. I mean, we've had people go publicly, they go on the air, they go in front of the news cameras. Nobody has ever gotten in trouble, and I think he would come up here and tell you that no one has ever been disciplined for criticizing the radio system. They can have their own opinion. That's fine. We did have some initial coverage issues actually, and every single coverage issue that we got we turned over to Motorola and we addressed every single one, but all of them were not necessarily Motorola's fault, and I'll give you examples and you'll probably like some of these. We ran into coverage issues early on that we couldn't understand, because they were coming sporadically. We would get an officer say, I can't transmit from this area, but we would go back and we could transmit fine. It was happening at different spots all over the City. 150 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 We found out that -- and this was a good trick. I used to use it. In the portable radios what the officers would do to make sure that they wouldn't forget the radio in the operations room, they'd put their keys over the antenna. And in the old system, the old system was very forgiving of that, you could still transmit. Well, the new system doesn't like that.
If you put the keys over the radio and you try to transmit with the keys there, the system is garbled, it won't get through. We quickly identified that as being -- that was sort of an epidemic in the department. A lot of cops did that. The cops complained early on about not being able to broadcast underground. For example, a lot of the locker rooms are below ground. They would go down there, they couldn't transmit. They would say, I can't transmit underground. Well, the system is not rated to transmit underground. We explained that to them. Although it does transmit in a lot of places underground, much more than the 151 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 old one, it is not rated to, nor does Motorola guarantee, that it will go underground. We understand that. As far as coverage issues even today -- and we do get a lot of them up from the street. If we get them up from the street, I send someone out immediately to test the coverage in that area. We often cannot duplicate what the officer is telling us. When we can duplicate it, we turn it over to Motorola, Motorola addresses it. So these coverage issues, I don't think that neither the FOP nor the officers understand how little coverage you had with the old system. Although, Councilman, as you said, we had in-car radios and we had portables. Once you walked in the house, the portables didn't work. And the portables, the old system, was really geared to in-car radios, the mobile radios. This system is made for portable radios. That's why we got portable radios. And I think Jim Wheeler referred to it as the fact that the officer now has got his communications device with him 152 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 all the time. We actually even bought better coverage for in Center City so that we could go into the thicker buildings, like these skyscrapers. We've paid more money and Motorola put up more equipment in Center City so that an officer could go into a skyscraper and still get coverage. A lot of people don't understand that, but we did that. We tested 1,600 grids in the City. We went into multiple locations in 1,600 grids in the City and tested. We banged on people's doors and asked them, Can we go into your house and test the radio? Some people threw us out and said no; other people let us come in. So we extensively tested this system before we did it, before we put this out. And just on the battery issue, the real battery issue is our fault, partly our fault. When we initially got complaints about the batteries, we weren't -- since we put all the batteries out at the same time, we thought that why aren't we getting complaints across the whole City at the same time. They were coming from very specific areas of the City. 153 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 So we actually did a test in the area that we got the most complaints from. What we actually did is, we went out and we gave them all the same batteries we've been using, but we rigorously rotated them. In other words, we made them charge the batteries like they were supposed to, and the complaints actually went away. The biggest problem in the districts was the failure to rotate the batteries. The ones that worked well, they had day work batteries, 4:00 to 12:00 batteries, and midnight to 8:00 batteries. And as we all will tell you here, every cop in the world, they took whatever battery they wanted to. A lot of times they took a battery that was not properly charged. Even saying all of that, we realized that the batteries were coming to the end of their life cycle. And little known by anyone here and Motorola, it's one of the -- as much as we can have beaten on them, and we beat on them pretty good, is Motorola stepped up to the plate with the batteries. And I don't 154 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 think anybody knows this, they gave us a half a million dollars in new batteries.
Those batteries out there today are brand new batteries given to us by Motorola for free.
I hope we have a warranty. There's nothing like free. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: No. The batteries are not -- the batteries are disposable, are consumable. The batteries are consumable. I mean, that's something that we know that we have to replace.
Commissioner, nothing is free. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: I sort of believe that, too, but I expected Motorola to go out with a news conference, and they really kept kind of quiet about it. And Motorola really said to us, You tell us what you want to do, we're going to give you all new batteries. They gave us all new batteries. And I think Bob will tell you, since those new batteries went out, I haven't heard of one complaint. Neither have my radio people, not one complaint. 155 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 So the battery problem we look at as that's something that we just have to refresh sooner. I know you want to say something. We had never had a totally portable radio system. So the batteries in our old radios, the old portables, they lasted for years, because we didn't use them all the time. So it was our inexperience in how fast these batteries had to be replenished that really led to the problem. Now we fully well understand. The batteries that are out there today, I will get money for those in the fall and by next summer we will replace those well before the months that we realize that 16 they start to fail. 17
Do these 18 batteries, Commissioner, that we presently have, are they of the technology where they don't have to be totally discharged before they're recharged? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: We decided -- we brought this before the Managing Director. Actually, he was very interested in the whole battery issue. 156 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 The batteries we have now are two types. They look identical, but actually they're two very significantly different batteries. One is of the type you just mentioned, Councilman, where it actually knows when it's got to be reconditioned. It has a little chip in it. There's a second battery that is a higher milliamperage battery. In other words, it's a more powerful battery, but for want of a better term, I call it like a dumb battery. It doesn't know. We have to recondition those ourselves. We actually wanted to try them, and half the City split up. Half have the dumb batteries and half have the smart batteries. And we did that sort of deliberately just to sort of test the technology. But they're both new. We know they'll last, and Motorola is going to strictly the smart batteries. Our next buy will be totally smart batteries.
Well, I would hope going forward, and I know this is maybe a first generation or second generation, 157 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 but that radio is heavy and big and bulky, and I would hope that some day going forward that we would have a radio that kind of is smaller and lighter, because I've heard a lot of officers complain that this new radio is heavier than the old one. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: If you look, Councilman, it's really the battery that's heavy. The radio is actually not that bad. And we sort of knew. I mean, we watched the battery situation. Actually, part of the battery problem again that never came to light was that when we went out and started to look at the battery issue, we found at least 60 batteries that weren't even ours. We knew they had come over from other departments. They looked absolutely identical. And that's the problem, they all look the same, but actually they were only half the power of the batteries we gave out.
When they're out on the street, they borrow a battery from Lower Merion. 158 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Well, we think it actually -- my Fire Department friends, we're going to blame them. We actually think that what happened is, in the past, what happened is, we had a different radio, so there wasn't really a problem, because the batteries were all different. We never swapped batteries. In the new system, all the batteries look different. There are a lot of fire engine companies that are right next to our police stations. We think probably what happened is, they came in and said, Look, you know what, can you give me a battery, I need a new battery. The operations guy swapped it, not realizing he's getting a battery half the power of the one he had. And we found at least 60 of those when we went out. So we know that that's part of the problem.
Color the police blue and I think they'll figure it out. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Well, you're laughing. All the new batteries, we actually colored them. We actually got a 159 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 big white stripe on half of them and a big red stripe on them. We said, If you don't see the white or the red stripe, don't take that battery because it's not ours.
You're a genius. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: Thank you.
Commissioner, now that you got raised to that level, I'm more comfortable -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: I can only go downhill from there, I think.
Earlier we heard from Bob Eddis and Jim Wheeler that they're doing something that normally isn't a union function, trying to help the whole family get this thing working. I guess your sergeants are probably the supervisors that have the most interaction with your patrol officers on a regular basis. I don't care if it's a sergeant, a lieutenant or captain, but I would assume it would probably be the sergeant. Is there any system that has them 160 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 on a regular basis asking the officers, Are you having any problem with your unit, with the radio, and could you tell me so I can get it downtown? You have a constant stream almost sort of a comsat of this 800 megahertz. You're seeing more, less, different, same problems, so you can kind of get an idea of whether you're getting a better handle on this. Is there anything like that going on? First of all, it would make what they're doing not necessary, but also it would institutionalize it within your -- forget the voluntary part where I have to put my name down, but where the sergeant is saying three people this week said, I have no faith in this, this system is -- and I've gone over are they well trained. These people know how to use the system. Do they know how to use the batteries, do they have smart batteries, dumb batteries, whatever. Could you just address that? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: One of our biggest issues -- and we were 161 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 talking in the back of the room. Actually, my sergeant, Greg Masi, he gets some of the complaints. The complaints come in and they're very non-specific, and they go along this line: This system stinks. And we say, Well, can you be a little more specific? And it's -- well, it really stinks.
It really stinks. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: And we try to sort of nail them down. I will tell you that I would bet you that 90 percent of the complaints the FOP gets relates to the two issues that I brought up, and probably almost the one, that they can't get through when they feel they have to get through. They get this bonk sound. I can't tell you that -- and it almost always happens in every big incident that we have, every assist. Every assist that's an issue. Every double or triple assist, I almost always hear complaints at my level that they're complaining that they can't get in. And it's true, they can't get in. 162 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 And for the longest time, and I think Bob sort of referred to it, is how the officers sometimes are very reluctant to call an assist, because maybe they feel that, I don't want to call it an assist because if it's really not that level, then they'll think like I'm a sissy or something. So they really don't like to call an assist unless they have to. Sometimes to their detriment they don't. So when they understand that if they push the button, that they get the priority, those who understand that are -- when they learn that -- and, actually, a lot of them didn't understand. We got a lot of these questions: What happens if I push the button and you push the button and all together we all push the button? And it actually works fine. Actually, the three of us get priority. Everybody else sort of gets second shrift here, short shrift and the whole thing. But they're learning that, that that button is there for their safety, and I think again as I go back, is that this longer curve of learning, I believe that it will eventually 163 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 take hold in the department. The new officers get a lot of training on the radio system and the new officers, I bet they don't get any complaints from them, because they didn't know anything different.
I got a question on the technology. The 800 megahertz obviously is light years ahead of some other technologies you were referring to, older technologies. Is there anything on the horizon or here today that is a level of technology above 800 megahertz? MR. McFADDEN: There's always new technology. The FCC is about to release another bank of channels. They have to wait until some of the broadcasters get off them. It's very close to the 800 spectrum, and that will generate another new generation of things we want to do. But public safety is probably a little slower in adopting new things. Traditionally public safety wants to see a system they're going buy. They want to see it 164 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 up and running someplace. They don't want to be the first person to experiment with that. So there are new things coming, but there's a reluctance until it's established in public safety that it doesn't get widely distributed in public safety.
Does that next generation have a name yet that if I heard it, I would recognize it? MR. McFADDEN: Well, it's really not a name. It's a way of taking the channels and breaking them up, and it would be TDMA, which the phone companies and the cell phone companies have been using. In fact, they are past TDMA. They are onto the next -- they went through TDMA, which is time division. They're in cell division now, and they're looking for the next thing, because in their environments, they want to load these systems up with as many users as possible because it generates income. The public safety environment is different. They do not want to load these systems up. So I think the next step is probably 165 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 TDMA, which would give you different features. It's only for use in urban areas, but that's probably the next thing that's coming.
For instance, the TDMA, do we have to throw out what we have to put that in or can we layer that on? MR. McFADDEN: No, you don't have to throw it out.
We can layer that on the system that we have? MR. McFADDEN: Yeah. And the reason is this: That I said earlier, a lot of these systems now are computer based. There's technology out there now that will take your -- just call it a very sophisticated switch and put that switch into your network and then allow you to add things on top of that. So that's the way the transition over -- that's one of the ways to do it. The limiting factor, however, is channels. You're still going to need somewhere to go, and public safety right now is struggling with channels. There's a whole 166 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 issue right now with trying to get some channels from Nextel. Public safety never has enough spectrum, quite frankly, and we're hoping that the 700 megahertz spectrum relieves that. The City of Philadelphia right now, I believe, has enough spectrum, but as your requirements change as -- some of the things you might want to do in the future operationally, because that really drives what you buy, may change. I guess you're looking in -- I'm sure you've got mobile data terminals now. What's the next generation mobile data terminals. So I think in public safety the next thing that is probably going to be bigger than anything else is more along the data lines, is more along sending IDs, fingerprints, photographs to the officer's car. That's probably where we're going next versus more voice things.
Okay. Do any cities have or counties have more than 30 channels on their 800 megahertz? Are we 167 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 pretty much the highest? MR. McFADDEN: No. I would say that's -- I'm trying to remember what certain people have. It's typically anywhere from 6 to 28, in that range. It's hard to get 7 channels, but that's typical. You have to 8 justify it to the FCC, is the other issue. 9 You have, I guess, 30 channels, only because 10 you were able to justify to the FCC to load, but if I were Chester County, I could not get 28 channels from the FCC.
Before we recess this joint hearing of Public Safety and Technology to the call of the Chair, I have three last questions for you. We want to get a commitment for the record of what Motorola really plans to do to support this system. When we first started talking about -- I came to Council right when this system started to be discussed and it was presented to me that we were going to have so much capacity, that we might even be able to sell some of the excess capacity or share the 168 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 excess capacity with possibly other interests, public, SEPTA or the PGW or Delaware River Port Authority. From the testimony, it sounds like the system may not have a sufficient channel capacity to support the demand. Your response to that? MR. McFADDEN: My response to that would be, public safety always uses as much as you give them. If you give public safety 28 channels, we can break those channels down into talk groups, which is the change, which gives you the capacity. Suddenly you're putting people -- you're making talk groups for groups in the city, any city, that did not have their own system in the past. Like typically would be suddenly we're going to add fire marshals, we're going to add some kind of teams in the Police Department that normally weren't off by themselves. So we start segmenting these changes into specialized functions, and that has a tendency to fill the thing up. I don't know exactly what new 169 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 functions or what groups that this City was broken off into, but that's typically what happens. That's why I said there's never enough spectrum for public safety because there's always a program that may change your operations and now we want to add more people, we want to add more functions, we want to add more groups.
This is to Commissioner Brennan, talk about training. When this system was designed and discussed here in Council, we were told that there would be private groups where a supervisor could talk to another supervisor. I was at a recent scene of an incident where the sergeant was talking to the lieutenant over the air and they really wanted to have a private conversation. Those supervisors, that lieutenant or the sergeant, did not have a clue how to program that radio or use that radio where he could talk to his supervisor privately. Now, that amazed me that they had no clue, Commissioner, that that radio had the capability of giving them a private 170 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 conversation between supervisors. That really surprised me. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BRENNAN: The supervisors don't have a way to privately talk. The commanders do. There's 7 channels, but there's 80 talk paths. In other 8 words, there's 80 -- for want of a better 9 term, the way to explain it is, it looks to 10 them like they have 80 different places to go. 11 And a lot of those talk paths are -- the ones 12 that you're most familiar with are the ones 13 that you hear on the air, like Southwest 14 Division, you hear the cops down there, and up 15 in Northwest and North Central, you hear those. That's only -- you listen mainly to the 15, but above the 15, there's 65 which you probably don't hear in places like narcotics, homicide, SWAT. They all have what appears to them to be their own radio stations for them. They talk privately. There is a way for the commanders to talk privately. That's used really by the Chief of Patrol on -- probably over the July 171 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 4th, he would tell all his commanders, Look, I want to talk to you, switch to the commanders channel. That channel -- that talk group is only available on commanders' radios. It is not available in the supervisors' radios. So the sergeant can't talk to his lieutenant privately.
Okay. Second question: Does the vendor, Motorola, maintain degradation records leading up to the March and May incidents? MR. McFADDEN: We have on -- the system has something called a System Watch, which is a computer that basically tracks all the activity on the system. So we have records of what is happening on that system, how many transmissions. I can probably have the technical people tell you.
Has that data been reviewed? MR. McFADDEN: Yes, I believe it has. I'm sure it has, because we had to go back and -- yeah, we did a thorough investigation. But I would rather have 172 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 Melissa answer that since she did it versus me answering questions.
And I hope it was shared with Mr. James, Deputy Commissioner James? MR. McFADDEN: What did we do as far as going back on the history, I guess, of this --
Yes. And we share the results. We don't always share all of the data. What the System Watch does is, it records all of the outbound traffic on the system, when a call starts, when it ends, the ID of the radio that was transmitting, the channel that it was assigned to and the system, the talk group, that it's on. And because the Police Department, for example, has 60,000 transmissions a day, all of this information is recorded, and ten seconds of air time equals about one megabyte of data, 20,000 lines of data, as every radio switches talk groups or pushes to talk or a dispatcher 173 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 talks. So what we do is, we analyze this data and consolidate it and deliver it to the City.
Last question: If the system has so much redundancy, why is it failing? Why are we having these problems if you've got five back-ups? Why are we in this situation? MR. McFADDEN: Well, I guess it's when do you want to move to the back-ups. The switchover happens automatically on the, I guess, the 18th, but you could manually move these systems over to back-up, if required. The reason you have all the back-ups is, in something you can't imagine that would happen right now, that it's a massive incident that something has happened, it gives you these -- manually you can move to these back-up systems. But you don't want to be doing that. It shouldn't be something that you're doing unless there's something like a 9/11 incident. It should not be switching to the back-up. And if it does, you shouldn't 174 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 even notice it. The redundancy there is that worst, worst, worst case scenario. So the system is not designed to be constantly going back and forth to the back-up.
I would hope not. MR. McFADDEN: And that's not what we think is the optimal way this thing should be working. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: If I could weigh in on that, too, Councilman. On the March 25th incident, there was no reason to go to a back-up, and in the period of time of transition, there was no back-up to go to really at that point in time for that Announcement Group for that three to five minutes. By the time you got everybody in the back-up, the problem was back -- they had unlocked. So by the time they got everybody there, they still were locked up, so you wouldn't have had a back-up to go to. And we're talking about the larger back-ups where we actually move traffic from 175 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 controllers -- or we move traffic from one side to the other, which you wouldn't have done on the 25th. On the 18th, the back-up was -- the system switched from the primary controller to the back-up controller like it's supposed to, so it did go to one level of back-up. And on the past weekend with the system, when you mention municipal radio had a problem, we did go to our back-up dispatch contegra units. So there's elements of the back-up that are different than just moving from one side to the other.
But I think we have to develop -- whether it's three minutes, ten minutes, I think going forward, Commissioner Brennan, at some point there's got to be a call made when you do go to your back-up. Whether it's three and a half minutes, four minutes, eight minutes, somebody has got to make the call, because if you have officers not able to communicate with headquarters for any length of time, it's unacceptable, especially if you have the 176 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 ability to go to a back-up system that would provide reinstating that service. I think we're at the point now, Mr. McFadden, where we really need to hear for, again, the record what Motorola plans to do to give us the support that we so desperately need here. MR. McFADDEN: We plan to continue with all the resources, and by "resources," I mean people, who are working on the system we have in the lab to see if we could duplicate the incident of the channels not switching over. We intend to keep all these resources. The monitoring center is 16 hours a day, seven days a week, until this 17 customer, the City of Philadelphia, is 18 satisfied with this system and that the 19 officers in the street have a comfort level 20 that I didn't hear today. But that's what we 21 want to do, and we intend to keep the 22 resources on it. 23 This is not a case where you bought 24 something from us and now you can't find us. So that's our commitment, to keep pumping 177 Public Safety/Technology - 7/14/04 - Res. 040655 people and engineers and architects until you are satisfied. And the people that are managing this system are on us constantly. This isn't a case where we show up once in a while. No. This is an everyday job for us until you're happy, quite frankly.
I'd like to thank everyone, not just the witnesses but those in attendance. This is very rare that we have a public hearing in the summer, July or August, in City Council. I can't even remember the last one. And so you know how important this is to the City Council, and I'm glad that everyone gave it that level of importance today, and hopefully we can move forward and keep improving this system. So the hearing is recessed until the calling of the Chair. Thank you. (Hearing adjourned at 4:50 p.m.) - - - 178 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter on July 14, 2004, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. ______________________________ MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)