ORANGE, COUNTY OF, SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT (6) - 2011

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ATTACHMENT A 2011-DJ-BX-2532 City: Buena Park: The City of Buena Park proposes to use the 2011 Justice Assistance Grant funding as follows: Purpose Areas: --- Law Enforcement --- Program Planning, Evaluation, and Technology Program Narrative: Outline the Proposed program activities - Purchase of cellular service receiving antennas, repeaters, wiring, and installation for the Buena Park Police Department two-story building. Total Cost Estimate: $25,000 Provide a brief Analysis of the need for the programs - The construction of a new 66,000 square-foot two-story Buena Park Police Department building was completed in December of 2009. Police Department personnel moved into the new building that same month. Although the new building is entirely above-ground, the required materials to construct the new PD (mostly metal framing) blocks cellular and radio service coverage inside the building. Our radio communication equipment and Mobile Data Computers (MDC's) operate on the Sprint network, which uses `CDMA' and `iDen' technology to provide service. Once this issue was discovered, Sprint carne out and installed the necessary antennas, amplifiers, and repeaters in order to get coverage for Sprint network. All the other major service providers (i.e. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) use a different technology than Sprint. The technology used by these other companies is very similar amongst them, while the Sprint technology is entirely different. The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for the City of Buena Park is located within the new Police Department building. When the City Council, Department Heads, and other stakeholders for the City meet in the EOC, anyone with a cellular phone that is not on the Sprint network cannot make or receive phone calls. This is very problematic - especially in the event of an emergency, either via natural causes such as an earthquake or flood or through criminal activity such as a terrorist attack. As past emergencies have taught us, sometimes cellular services get jammed at the time of the emergency and the best way to communicate with other emergency responders is through texting on cell phones. In late May of 2011 at about noon, the entire Orange County 800Mhz radio system went down for about an hour. The Buena Park Police Department (and all other O.C. agencies) had to quickly come up with a contingency plan in order to communicate with the police officers in the field: In our case, we tried to have our dispatchers communicate with officers in the field via cellular phones. Unfortunately, many on-duty dispatchers were unable to use their cellular phones as they were not on the Sprint network. 2011-DJ-BX-2532 Page 8 of 38 20A-16