Yuma-area law agencies get communication funds

When he was a young deputy patrolling the Wellton area during the 1970s, Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden sometimes had great difficulty getting a radio signal to talk to dispatch.

“We had one radio channel for everybody in Yuma County,” he said. “There were many, many places where you couldn't talk to anybody. When I was working in Wellton, you could park you car, and if you parked it right next to a pile of rocks and stood right by the door, you could talk. But five feet either way, you couldn't talk to anybody.”

That meant if Ogden needed to communicate with a deputy patrolling in the San Luis area, he had to pick up a phone.

Compounding the issue further, if the person he needed to speak to was with a different agency, they had to physically exchange radios.

“You picked up a telephone, or when you got down there and were working with somebody side by side — I'd have to give you a radio and you'd have to give me a radio,” he said. “Back then we didn't have many hand-held radios.”

Today, using the interoperable emergency communications system in Yuma, a deputy in Wellton can simply flip a switch and talk to all of the local police, fire and medical emergency entities just about anywhere in Yuma County.

“The system is set up now where it truly is a regional system,” said San Luis Fire Chief Hank Green. “I flip the switch and I can talk to any of my counterparts in the fire service. I flip a switch and I can talk to anybody else. It is truly integrated communications. We don't have to have runners or messengers, we can just talk to each other and it is absolutely seamless.”

That is a vast improvement over having to stand next to a pile of rocks in the hopes of finding a signal, Ogden agreed.

“It is, and so many times we end up with a situation that maybe there is a law enforcement situation but we need medical treatment or (the fire department) immediately. Now there are so many channels — you click it and start talking to them. It is very exciting.”

Using the Yuma Regional Communications System, all of the member agencies who have access can also use each other's computer databases in real time.

And soon, thanks to a $4 million grant of federal money given by the Office of Emergency Communications' Border Interoperability Demonstration Project, all of the federal agencies in Yuma will have access to the real-time data-sharing system, a tool that has been unavailable to them.

The grant money would have been unattainable had all of the local agencies not worked together, said Chief Jack McArthur of the Yuma Fire Department.

“The success has been about the cooperation. One of the reasons I think we got this grant is because I think we have done everything that we said we are going to do up to this point.”

Most importantly, McArthur added, the grant means the system isn't coming directly out of the pockets of local tax payers.

About 20 federal, state and local agencies will be part of the new system named the Yuma Full Voice and Data Integration Demonstration Project.

The agencies will each receive the particular equipment and training they require in order to use the system, whether that be voice radio consoles, data consoles, mobile data computers for vehicles, microwave technology or radio equipment.

“The game is $4 million for Yuma County as a whole,” Ogden said. “Some of the agencies will be getting some types of equipment and other agencies will be getting others. The whole thing is just to make it work for everybody in Yuma County.”

Every law enforcement agency will have the ability to work in sync should need arise, said city of Yuma Administrator Greg Wilkinson.

“It doesn't matter if you are ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals, Border Patrol, Customs or a local firefighter — you'll have the ability to talk. That is something we have been trying to achieve for a long time.”

The need for the project was made clear during the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, Green said.

“They couldn't communicate with each other, they couldn't share critical information, and we can do that now. As a small organization, we have now become not just a small fish in a pond, we are a small fish as part of a school of fish which has a different impact. For us that is excellent — as good as it gets.”

Chris McDaniel can be reached at cmcdaniel@yumasun.com or 539-6849.