Posted on Saturday, 20th March 2010 by Patrick Dorwin

In another update on the Milwaukee Police Departments attempt to get their new radio system to work, we learn that the city of Milwaukee taxpayers will borrow another million dollars to throw at the problem.

Panel recommends borrowing for troubled police radio system

This radio system is already millions of dollars over budget and 5 years behind schedule… Oh, and it still doesn’t work. OpenSky has been fully operational for more than a month, police officers are still telling up that there has been no improvement. There are ‘dead spots” all over the city and when the radios are needed most, they fail to transmit, leaving the officers to deal with serious situations alone, such as the story we broke here on BadgerBlogger, later picked up by the dead-tree media, in which police officers were chasing someone with a gun in Washington High School. The OpenSky radios totally failed to work inside the building, leaving the officers unable to call for backup. The officers on scene had to commandeer the radios of MPS security guards so they could communicate with each other.

I think someone at City Hall needs to read the things that police officers have been saying here at BadgerBlogger before spending another dime of our tax dollars. It is clear that this system has failed to work everywhere it has been tried (look to the New York cancellation of the $2 billion contract), and it is time to get our officers radios that will work every time they need it. The county has offered to allow MPD to join its system, it works county wide and beyond and it allows other police/fire agencies to communicate with one another, something that OpenSky does not allow. It’s an option that at least needs to be looked at… Before it’s to late.

Posted in Home, Open Sky Radios | Comments (4)

4 Responses to “Open Sky — Milwaukee about to dump another million dollars on a failed system”



  1. Roland_Melnick Says:
    March 20th, 2010 at 4:07 pm

    The county has offered to allow MPD to join its system, it works county wide and beyond and it allows other police/fire agencies to communicate with one another, something that OpenSky does not allow.

    One little clarification…the OpenSky system itself doesn’t work with other agencies, but the radios outfitted in the patrol cars and hand-held units are capable of switching to an alternate mode that allows inter-agency communication…allegedly. Remember when a group of our guys went to assist the Pittsburgh PD last year? At the time, they reported that the hand-held units (walkie-talkies) were able to communicate with Pittsburgh coppers.



  2. mkescan Says:
    March 22nd, 2010 at 7:26 pm

    Interesting stuff from one of the techs working on the new Washington County digital trunked radio system (also from Harris)
    http://forums.radioreference.com/wisconsin-radio-discussion-forum/157051-washington-county-begin-coverage-testing-4.html#post1283629



  3. Patrick Dorwin Says:
    March 22nd, 2010 at 9:17 pm

    UPDATE: Milwaukee Police / OpenSky — Quit bitching and do your job



  4. Badger Blogger » Blog Archive » Milwaukee PD sergeant faces suspension for discussing problems with OpenSky Says:
    March 23rd, 2010 at 8:23 am

    [...] been doing an excellent job with both reporting and follow-up to problems with Milwaukee PD’s conversion to the OpenSky digital radio [...]

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