DHS says responders resistant to communications sharing

A top Homeland Security Department official told a House panel that the agency has made significant progress toward providing first responders with interoperable radio technology but said "culture" was part of the problem.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee, Jay Cohen, the department's undersecretary for science and technology, said first responders were not always enthusiastic about sharing communications.

"We have some communities where the police chief only wants the police to talk to him ...," Cohen said. To a large extent, "technology is not the problem with interoperability ... it's the culture," he said. Cohen said that although the department was preparing to test a "phone-home" interoperable system for first responders, the jury was out on whether it would be widely accepted.

The undersecretary said later that the department had signed a contract with Thales Communications, Inc., to test an interoperable radio system developed by the company. "It's designed for first responders; it's agile," Cohen said.

He said the Thales radios were similar to ones used by the military. "They cost $10,000 each," he said. "We are hoping to get that down to maybe $1,000."

Cohen said the reluctance of police personnel to let other first responders listen in on their communications was understandable in view of the "arrest-and-convict" nature of law enforcement operations. "There are police who do not want to share real-time criminal intelligence with ambulance crews," he said.

The need for promoting interoperable communications systems for first responders was dramatically demonstrated on Sept. 11, 2001, when many of the firefighters in New York's World Trade Center's North Tower failed to receive an emergency evacuation order broadcast over police radio shortly before the building collapsed. An estimated 120 firefighters died in the collapse of the tower.