Radio protocol again results in heated meeting

Published 9:10 am Monday, April 15, 2024

SOUTH BEND — Changes may be on the horizon for law enforcement in Pacific County after Pacific County Sheriff Daniel Garcia nudged agencies to update radio etiquette. Agencies have been at odds for several weeks, and opinions have differed greatly on the issue. All sides came together for a meeting of the Pacific County 911 Dispatch Center (PacCom) Administrative Board on April 12.

The issue at hand is Garcia’s sudden change in mid-March of his agency’s radio etiquette without bringing the topic up to the Pacific County Radio Operations Advisory Board or PacCom Admin Board — a decision he now admits could have gone better.

PacCom dispatchers have aggressively opposed any change and have cited the long-term use of the current standard – “hey it’s me, hey you, this is my traffic” used by law enforcement for decades. Fire and emergency medical services have used the “hey you, this is me, this is my traffic” — which is the model Garcia has implemented for his agency.

Garcia prefers the method outlined as the Association of Public-Safety Communications Official’s standard and Incident Radio Communications (ICO) method. It is the gold standard nationwide for law enforcement agencies. It is used by neighboring Grays Harbor County and Mason County. Lewis County uses the traditional method used in Pacific County.

Not seeing the argumentThe primary concern tossed out in opposition to Garcia’s change has been that “it creates an officer safety issue,” which Garcia discounts. Dispatchers have stated that the new method is confusing and could put deputies and other officers in jeopardy. So far, dispatchers have had no major issues.

“The argument is three things,” Garcia said. “The argument is that it is confusing coupled with officer safety, which is one of those bomb drops that nobody is allowed to challenge once it is said. And then third is we have always done it this way.”

“So as we look at that, I listen to the radio all the time and have been for the last 11 years listening to the radio and a user of the radio on the fire side [for which he volunteered before becoming sheriff]. I hear dispatch flawlessly go back and forth between the two without a hitch in their step and have been for a very long time,” Garcia added.

One of Garcia’s critical reasons for implementing the change is to help avoid officer safety issues, which he says the “it’s me, hey you” method creates. When an officer keys their microphone to transmit a message, squelch and repeaters can often cut off the first couple seconds of a transmission — meaning if a unit identifies itself at the beginning, it may not go across the air.

“I am not talking on behalf of the sheriff’s office,” PCSO Deputy Rafael Macintosh said. “I get where all the sides are coming from, but nobody has yet to ask us three deputies that haven’t said anything about how we feel about the safety.”

“So, I am going to tell you right now: the first day we switched, I said to my sergeant, ‘Do I really have to do that because I don’t totally agree?’ and he was like, ‘Yes, it was an order.’ So, I was like, ‘OK, I’ll follow your order.’ The whole unit [who is] calling has been brought up, and that is a real thing. I was asked multiple times what unit was calling before we switched. Since we’ve switched, I have been asked one time over the last two or three weeks, however long we’ve done it,” Macintosh added.

Macintosh isn’t alone; most deputies and other law enforcement in the county have been asked to repeat their transmissions due to radio issues. Radio communications in the county are plagued by remoteness and obsolete towers and repeater systems.

Anyone who listens to the fire and EMS channels can often hear overlaps from Mason County, which uses the same frequency, 154.190. Although Mason County is about 50 miles away, their transmissions are often crisper.

‘You are playing games!’

Dispatchers present for the meeting were adamantly against any changes and pointed to the fact that the radio ops board had already held a vote that should have been binding. The ops board voted on March 28, 5-0, to “leave things the way they were,” and the fire agencies abstained, stating they wanted to let law enforcement to sort it out themselves.

Dispatcher Amber Rye was the most outspoken dispatch member and engaged in a heated back and forth with Garcia before Admin Board Chair Julie Struck stepped in.

“I am not forcing you to change anything, and I am not asking your permission,” Garcia said to dispatchers present.

Pull Quote

‘I am not forcing you to change anything, and I am not asking your permission.’

Sheriff Daniel Garcia, addressing county

dispatchers about radio protocol change

“It wasn’t just about dispatch, though,” Rye said. “The vote was to keep the radio traffic the same, and it wasn’t about dispatch. It wasn’t, and clearly the vote was keeping radio traffic the same, and you voted yes, and you are playing games by continuing to do it the wrong way.”

“I am not playing games,” Garcia said.

Rye and other dispatch members said they were not against change but wanted consistency across all law enforcement. With buy-in from other agencies, including the Raymond (RPD) and South Bend (SBPD) police departments, the issue could become a moot point — and may already have.

RPD Chief Pat Matlock and SBPD Chief Lucas Stigall were active participants in the meeting and were willing to change. The primary concern was the lack of transparency from the sheriff’s office and heads-up about the issue.

David Glasson, Long Beach City Administrator and a member of the ops and admin boards, pointed out that no policies exist on radio etiquette for officers or fire personnel. He also elaborated that neither the ops board nor the admin board has policies on handling these sorts of issues — something he wants to fix promptly.

“My only opposition to it — it’s not that I’m opposed to changing,” Stigall said. “I’m just opposed to one agency being different. I had a conversation with the sheriff and I explained that to him that, just like Dave was saying, we need to have a process in place and I was under the impression that we do, which is the ops board.”

The ops board is not a binding committee; it is only an advisory board that can make recommendations to the PacCom Admin Board. Any formal decision would have to be recommended and either adopted or rejected by a majority vote of the PacCom Admin Board.

According to public records, only one policy exists for radio communications, and it only applies to dispatchers. It states that dispatchers must transmit on the first transmission in the order of “this is me, hey you, and this is the traffic.” The policy is outlined in the PacCom Law Enforcement Field Communications Manual.

What if…

Struck and Raymond Mayor Dee Roberts, voting members, adamantly wanted law enforcement on the same page following the meeting. During the hour-long meeting, one of the biggest questions was whether Garcia would follow the vote if the board voted against his new policy.

“My question to the sheriff is, you say you are adamantly, I mean you’re saying ‘I’m not gonna change.’ But if the board today said, ‘We would like you to go back to the way it was, the old way, and give that board an opportunity to put together a process and get all the agencies’ buy-in to make the change one way or another’ would you do that?” Roberts asked.

“On fundamental purposes, no,” Garcia replied. “I am not the only agency doing it different. It’s, this is across the board the arguments [that] are essentially just like that ops board meeting; it was intended to pressure us into changing. I am not making this an issue; I did not make this a big deal. So, to answer your question, no.”

“That is unfortunate,” Roberts stated.

Professional dispatch consultant Steve Reinke, of Reinke & Associates, was also involved in the meeting and had one point to make: Agencies need to be on the same page for the sake of the citizens and themselves. He went as far as to say that the topic had never come up in his career.

“The issue is not which order model is better,” Reinke said. “Certainly, there are pros and cons to both, and I actually lean more toward the ICS model and FAA model because that is what I used when I was an air traffic controller. But the issue — and one person identified it — is consistency.”

“No one, and I mean no dispatch center that I am aware of anywhere, has a channel where one dispatcher is working where agencies use the different order models on the same channel, at the same time, with the same dispatcher, because the goal is that everybody knows what to expect when they hear something on the air,” Reinke added.

Back to the drawing board

Pacific County General Administration Chief Administrative Officer Paul Plakinger characterized Garcia’s unilateral move as the cause of the debate.

“The unfortunate part about all of this, and it’s been said before, is that most of this could have been avoided simply by better communication from the sheriff’s office,” Plakinger said. “The decision was made by one elected official that affected an entire agency without engaging the governing body, which is the PacCom Administrative Board, to notify the governing body of a pending change that affected an entire agency and the entire county.”

“That is the issue, and better communication, I think, is the lesson here for everybody, but if this change was going to be made by the sheriff’s office when the sheriff had authority over dispatch entirely, we are talking about something different here. But the fact is, this was done after the governance of PacCom changed, and this body was not informed of the change,” Plakinger added.

Plakinger also honed in on the fact Garcia admitted he knew any change would not be received well by other agencies.

“The sheriff himself has expressed that he anticipated he was going to run into friction by bringing this up,” Plakinger said. “That says to me there was a reason it wasn’t brought up, and the change was made. We need to be better about communicating when things are going to affect more than just us.”

“The chiefs have expressed that there is a willingness to consider this change, and it’s just unfortunate that we are even here having to talk about this today when this could have happened up front, and sheriff, you probably would have gotten buy-in. There is a lesson here; you probably would have gotten buy-in if you simply would have engaged the proper people at the appropriate time, and then we are not having any of these discussions,” Plakinger added.

Garcia admitted earlier in the meeting that he could have handled the whole thing better after Pacific County Commissioner Lisa Olsen asked him about the process he took.

“The mistake that I made is I didn’t have [Chief Criminal Deputy Randy Wiegardt] go and talk to the other police chiefs,” Garcia said. “That is my mistake; things could have been better.”

The board opted to hand the issue back to the radio ops board to discuss and send back a recommendation. Matlock said during the meeting that he plans to meet with Garcia about the topic. Long Beach Police Chief Flint Wright, who was on vacation, is also expected to speak with Garcia.

No formal decision has been made as of reporting.

Garcia did elaborate that his deputies will use the standard law enforcement phonetics moving forward instead of the military phonetics, but said “it may” get mixed up occasionally.