Posted on Thursday, 7th October 2010 by Patrick Dorwin
The $20 million radio system that the Barrett administration has forced into service in the Milwaukee police Department and now the Milwaukee Fire Department, even though it is still full of problems, crashed today. This system crash left out police and fire fighters without communications for a half hour this morning, and it was more than an hour before it became fully operational.
Imagine the chaos if this would have happened on a busy Friday night.
But we are told that everything is under control… Expect Chief Flynn to tell us once again that we are being forced into this digital radio system, even though he knows that is not true. OpenSky is a multimillion dollar failure.
Comments? I’ll bet the citizens of Milwaukee would like to hear from any first responders that were left in the lurch today.
Tags: OpenSky
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33 Responses to “Milwaukee First Responders left in the dark as OpenSky fails”
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October 7th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
A kid named Rajib Mitra went to the federal pen for 9 years for disrupting Madison police communications for a few minutes during Holloween ‘festivities’ - guess if he’d paid millions for the privilege he’d ‘a been running for governor already….
October 7th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Tom Barrett’s EPIC FAIL!
October 7th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Remember how the Chief slipped and said that nothing had been done with OpenSky for the past 6 years? Who has been the mayor of Milwaukee for the past 6 years?
October 7th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Post in a forum last week, from a guy who builds & services radio systems.
Milwaukee is in too deep now to just pull the plug. But, don’t worry…I am sure Opensky will become obsolete soon enough as Harris is more worried about P25IP than a 15 year old format that only sold to a few handfull of customers to begin with.
When Harris is sick of throwing money at this dead format, they will kill it off and tell Milwaukee you have X amount of years of support on this, then it will not longer be supported.
Proprietary public safety systems are a bad idea.
Proprietary systems in commercial/business use is a little different. Mototrbo and Nexedge have their place. But not for public safety.
Milwaukee would have been smart to abandon Opensky and go P25 trunked back when P25 was making it’s debut.
After all, it’s been 7+ years for this system to finally get to this point.
Then they wouldn’t have been in too deep to pull out before blowing it’s cash on Opensky. If they had went P25, they would have more vendors to choose from for equipment and have something interoperable.
October 7th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Mark Belling is teeing up the topic right now on WISN 1130 AM.
October 7th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Grant announcement October 2, 2002, purchased August, 2003, what a joke. And Barrett, you, Kleczka and Kohl were all at that October announcement.
October 7th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
You gotta listen to this interview from Flynn http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/104501179.html under Related Content: Audio:
Sounds like some people at Harris are some big time idiots.
October 7th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
So Milwaukee would shut down a radio system being used by Fire & Police, if they think somebody hacked in?
October 7th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
That was my thought while listening to the ‘TMJ audio…what kind of backup system does MPD have to flip to? Sounds like based on what I’ve been hearing not much of one….
October 7th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Yeah, Flynn didn’t give a answer when asked about a back up system. Sheriff & some suburban departments can switch over to the City of Greenfield trunked radio system, or share 2 repeaters called ITAC with everyone else until problem is fixed. Oak Creek PD has Nextels
October 8th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
I am having a hard time believing that Harris made a mistake like that. Not saying Flynn & others made up this story and Harris agreed to it…I don’t know. Somebody at Harris doing a update to the system, should know about the system security.
October 8th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that Flynn gave his “Mission accomplished” presser? And why is it that in New York City the Police Commissioner can’t do a presser without Mayor Blumberg standing next to him but in Milwaukee Barret is never anywhere to be seen?
October 8th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
There are so many issues I have a problem with here.
1. Why was there not a failsoft frequency in place incase the repeaters go down like they did in this case. A failsoft frequency is a fallback that radios are programmed with so that if any of the repeater sites or system controller go down, communications are still possible. Most radio systems have this in place.
2. A tech working on the system? Really??? Does this mean that every time maintenance is performed the system goes down? It was down for 1/2 hour! Tom Barrett claims this is a system feature so “terrorists” can’t hack into it! What a bunch of &^%^%*$%$
God help the Fire Fighters who will be forced over to opensky in the near future.
October 9th, 2010 at 6:00 am
Patrick McIlheran chimes in in his latest column….
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/104611094.html
October 9th, 2010 at 9:20 am
It’s reported that this radio system was purchased in August 2003, which was Arthur Jones’ last year as Police Chief in Milwaukee (actually his last 4 months). Not a hell of alot of time for him to check the system out (although it can certainly be argued that you do a little research before making the purchase, so he’s not completely off the hook). Who was the Milwaukee Police Chief for the next 4 years? I remember reading and hearing something about “eminently qualified” but I just can’t recall the name. Seems the system should have been tested during that time period before passing it on to Flynn. I also seem to recall reading somewhere that Flynn said something about having something in common with Barack HUSSEIN Obama and “inheriting” this mess. Of course, Barrett has been the Mayor since 2004, so one would expect the CEO of the corporation to be interested in what is, or is not, going on in the major Divisions of the company. Or to put it another way, if Barrett had been the head coach or general manager of a team in professional sports and taken the same interest in his team as he has in the operations of the City of Milwaukee, he would have been fired a long time ago.
October 9th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Remember, when Barrett was still in Congress, he voted to appropriate the money for the initial purchase of OpenSky, before he became the do-nothing Mayor and watched failure after failure of the system.
October 9th, 2010 at 10:07 am
Mayor Barrett on OpenSky, “the system works as it should”.
October 9th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Sort of sounds like Milwaukee picked OpenSky because of all the cool things a sales person said about it. It’s obvious nobody did any research.
People in a scanning group laughed way back when they mentioned it would be OpenSky,they said MPD will be able to talk to Fedx and that’s about it.
October 9th, 2010 at 11:16 am
You can bet that Uncle Herbie (the man behind the curtain who controls everything that happens in the City of Milwaukee including appointments within the City government) had alot to do with this purchase which would explain why Tom Barrett voted to appropriate the money and still stands by it now. Barrett is so indecisive that he needs a driver so that he can get through intersections controlled by 4-way stop signs (or is it supposed to be Stop Signs now?) when there is another vehicle present.
October 9th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Interesting comment on JSOnline from a Milwaukee Firefighter, now might shed some light as to why MFD radios sound 10 times better then when MPD had their patch up, and you can monitor on a scanner.
Somebody in a scanner forum mentioned a while back that MPD did not have to use the OpenSky feature of the system. This comment sounds like MFD isn’t using the OpenSky feature or whatever it’s called. They still have problems but not like MPD did with crappy audio.
Here is the comment..
Is anyone aware that the Milwaukee Fire Department is also using the same radio program as the Milwaukee Police Department? They do not use Open Sky radios, but are using the Harris radio program just like the Police Department. It is not about politics, but the safety of the police, firefighters and the citizens of Milwaukee. The Fire Department was without communication as well during this “mistake”. Significant questions went without answers during recent training about specific safety issues related to this new system. Twenty four hour support was to be provided by the company. We haven’t seen a single person from Harris since the switch to their radio program two weeks ago. What we weren’t told is that support would be by phone or internet and not in person. Someone needs to be getting answers soon.
October 9th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
mkescan sez: “Sort of sounds like Milwaukee picked OpenSky because of all the cool things a sales person said about it.”
~sigh~ Good Lord.
Rule #1: Never EVER install first generation technology into critical applications.
Silly me. I thought everyone knew that.
October 9th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Might be worth the time for an investigative reporter from the msm to look into who, if anybody - including relatives, from MPD might have invested money into this company.
October 9th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
The wiki history of M/A-Com (now Harris Corp)….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M/A-COM
October 10th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Another great comment from a guy that builds & services radio systems.
Projects can and do get delayed, and sometimes costs occur that push a project price above budget. If you read the previous posts about the Milwaukee system, you’d know it is 7 YEARS in the making, and massively over budget. During that 7 year period I have seen with my own eyes about 15 large area systems go in by my ex employer while the Opensky system was off the air still being built. I personally built 5 large area systems with my own hands while Opensky for one city was being installed. One of my systems covers 1/2 the state of Wisconsin. 4 of them can be heard on here with live audio feeds.
October 10th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Forgot this part.
There is no reason a “state of the art” or “cutting edge” that Opensky pushed itself to be needed to be such an epic fail. Sadly, the sales people kept pushing it, and sadly Harris doesn’t have the balls to cut their losses and reputation damage and just kill the product off. Now Harris and it’s dealers involved have to deal with the negative reputation it’s caused.
October 10th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
The problem is not just MA-COM/Harris.
It’s the total failure of the “leaders’ in this city to admit they made a mistake.
It’s more than ignorance of the electronics involved. No one from TommyBoy to Hegerty to Flynn and the little bullies on the common council will admit they screwed up and at this point can’t correct it.
At any point from 2002 when reports came in that the system was an epic failure, it could have been cancelled.
This now becomes a coverup to protect the disinterested Barrett.
October 11th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I just got word today that alderman Bob Donovan has filed an Open Records Request for everything related to Open Sky.
October 11th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Here is Bob Donovan’s open records press release.
Go get ‘em Bob!
October 12th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Donovan Asks for Public Records, E-Mails About Open Sky
http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/104771299.html
Milwaukee Alderman Seeks OpenSky Records
http://www.wisn.com/news/25361663/detail.html?treets=mil&tid=2654056049813&tml=mil_12pm&tmi=mil_12pm_1_11000110122010&ts=H
October 12th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Listen to what Donovan has to say about why media & others are not doing what he is doing.
http://www.620wtmj.com/podcasts/charlie_sykes_podcast/104783499.html?video=pop&t=a
October 12th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I talked with Bob this morning (after his interview with Jay Weber and before his interview with Charlie). Bob told me about the Journal’s initial Open Records Request and said the Department said it would cost the Journal $50,000 for their time and effort, and the Journal backed off their request. I told him the Journal reported that they were going to sue the Department after they gave Gina Barton a similar response when she demanded records unrelated to Open Sky but no less sensitive. Perhaps there was something lost in Bob’s communication with the City Attorney as to why the Journal “backed off” their Open Records Request on this issue. That aside, Bob told me that his Open Records Request was met with a similar reaction from the Department. There’s definitely something Barret and Flynn don’t want people to know about this fiasco.
October 12th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I will tell you one thing it might be. Everyone is saying some day soon, Harris could tell Milwaukee they will give them X more years of support,then OpenSky will no longer be supported. Maybe they already told Milwaukee this.
October 16th, 2010 at 8:46 am
“it was stated that once the ‘controller’ was back up, it took at least 30 minutes for all the subscribers to re-affiliate and begin to work.
Seems the system has to ‘push’ a lot of information over the air (individual personalities or whatever) to EACH radio before it will even begin to operate”