JERSEY CITY— New Jersey officials
today demonstrated technological solutions
they are using to enable personnel from
different emergency agencies and first
responder disciplines to communicate with
each other using their existing radio
equipment, Attorney General Peter C. Harvey
announced.
At
a press conference at Jersey City’s
Emergency Operations Center on Summit
Avenue, Attorney General Harvey, State
Police Lt. Col. Lori Hennon-Bell and federal,
state and municipal officials, observed
first responders from federal, state,
local and other agencies demonstrate “interoperable”
radio communication. Led by Raymond Hayling
II, the state’s Chief Public Safety
Communications Officer, 12 different agencies
were connected by tuning to assigned frequencies
in their own band that are then connected
through a central dispatching center.
The 12 agencies represented federal, county,
state and municipal governments and each
operated on different radio frequencies
among the 800 MHz, UHF and VHF spectrums.
Prior to today’s public demonstration,
the system was tested with more than 40
agencies, including New York City OEM,
FBI, NY/NJ Port Authority and other New
Jersey public safety agencies.
“One
of the many lessons of 9/11 was that first
responders — primarily at the command
level — must be able to talk to
each other. As the World Trade Center
towers began to fall, an event witnessed
from this very location, we know that
police and firefighter commanders had
numerous and debilitating problems communicating
by radio with their own units and, most
of all, with each other,” said Attorney
General Harvey, who also chairs New Jersey’s
Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force,
the State’s cabinet-level body that
sets homeland security policy and oversees
its implementation. “This is a great
step forward for New Jersey.”
“I
am pleased that New Jersey is on the cutting
edge in providing enhanced inter-agency
communications,” said Col. Rick
Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey
State Police. “As Director of the
State Office of Emergency Management,
I know how vital it is that commanders
from different first-responder agencies,
whether law enforcement, firefighters,
emergency medical services technicians
or others, be able to communicate with
each other. Effective inter-agency communication
is critical to effective response to —
and management of — emergencies.
It is also critical to ensuring responders’
safety.”
Harvey
said that the technology demonstrated
today had already provided successful
interoperable communications in the Northeastern
New Jersey Urban Area Security Initiative
(UASI) region this past summer during
the Republican National Convention and
during the period from August through
November that the Homeland Security Alert
System was elevated to orange status for
the financial sector in Northern New Jersey
based on threats against the Prudential
building in Newark.
The
inter-agency radio system had been developed
as a priority of New Jersey’s UASI,
which includes the cities of Jersey City
and Newark, as well as Bergen, Essex,
Hudson, Morris, Passaic and Union counties.
The UASI region has dedicated approximately
$1 million in federal homeland security
funds from the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) to facilitate enhanced
inter-agency communications to this point.
Agencies that participated in today’s
demonstration were: the United States
Coast Guard; FBI; the New
Jersey State Police (Troop B); NY/NJ
Port Authority; the University of Medicine
and Dentistry of New Jersey’s REMCS
Unit; Hudson County Prosecutor’s
Office; NJ
Department of Transportation; Essex
County Sheriff’s Department; Passaic
County Sheriff’s Department; Jersey
City Police Department; Jersey City Fire
Department; Jersey City Emergency Medical
Services; Newark Police Department; Paramus
Police Department; Newark Fire Department;
Nutley Fire Department/HazMat Unit.
Hayling said that New Jersey’s current
technological solution relies on existing
frequencies being “patched”
together on existing equipment through
a central dispatch point. He said that
a northern New Jersey law enforcement
agency has been designated as the UASI
region’s “dispatch center”
when inter-agency communications are required.
Furthermore, Hayling noted that New Jersey’s
technological solution differs from those
based on “interconnect switches,”
in which numerous radio systems are patched
together through a separate piece of technology.
Interconnect switches result in a “party
line” connection, he said, in which
many individuals and agencies may be indiscriminately
linked. New Jersey’s solution, on
the other hand, results in a targeted
“private line,” helping to
ensure that only the first responders
key to any particular emergency are able
to communicate. Hayling said that improvements
to the system are ongoing.
In addition to the UASI region, two other
regions of the state — designated
by the Domestic
Security Preparedness Task Force —
are already using Task Force distributed
planning grants to implement similar enhanced
inter-agency communications systems. These
are the Delaware River Region (Burlington,
Camden, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem
counties) and the Central Region (Somerset,
Middlesex, Mercer and Monmouth counties).
Hayling said that the remaining Task Force
designated regions (the Northwest Region
— Hunterdon, Sussex and Warren counties
and the Shore Region — Atlantic,
Cape May and Ocean counties) would be
coming online in the next few years.
In the long term, Attorney General Harvey
said, the state ultimately expects to
upgrade to a system that uses standardized
radio equipment and frequencies. This
will cost approximately $150 million to
$200 million, he said.
According to Hayling, the system demonstrated
today allowed Jersey City to meet the
standards of RapidCom 9/30, a Department
of Homeland Security initiative announced
by President Bush in July 2004. RapidCom
9/30 required the demonstration of incident-level,
interoperable emergency communications
by September 30, 2004. It was designed
to enable first responders in 10 cities
identified by DHS as “high-threat
urban areas” to communicate with
each other in the event of a large emergency
incident such as a terrorist attack. In
addition to Jersey City, the nine other
RapidCom 9/30 areas were: New York, NY;
Chicago, IL; Washington, DC and the surrounding
Capital Region; Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco,
CA; Philadelphia, PA; Houston, TX; Miami,
FL; and Boston, MA.
Attorney
General Harvey noted that interoperability
is a high priority for all public safety
agencies nationwide. In spring 2002, the
federal government established the SAFECOM
program to help local, state and federal
public safety agencies to improve public
safety response through more effective
and efficient interoperable wireless communications.
The SAFECOM program is now located in
the Department of Homeland Security.
At the state level, Harvey in December
appointed Hayling as New Jersey’s
first Chief Public Safety Communications
Officer to coordinate interoperability
issues statewide. In addition, the Public
Safety Interoperable Communications Act,
adopted into law in January 2004, established
a State
Public
Safety Interoperable Communications Coordinating
Council (SPSICCC), a 16-person body made
up of state cabinet members or their designees
and representatives of the state’s
first responder organizations. The SPSICC,
which is administratively located in the
Office of the Attorney General, is charged
with developing a strategic plan for statewide
interoperability. Hayling serves as its
executive director.
Harvey also pointed out that the 9/11
Commission had strongly recommended enhanced
inter-agency radio communications in its
final report. As a result, in addition
to consolidating intelligence functions
under a National Intelligence Director,
the 9/11 Commission Report Implementation
Act of 2004, signed into law in December
by President Bush, assigns a portion of
the 700 MHz band now used for television
broadcasting to public safety agencies.