Police officers are at a serious disadvantage when they cannot communicate with officers from other jurisdictions. Police activities often require officers to pursue criminal suspects across jurisdictional lines, creating the need to effectively and quickly communicate with officers in neighboring vicinities. The problem is that different police agencies are often on different radio frequencies, effectively disallowing direct radio communication. Compounding the problem is that there are a limited number of radio frequencies to serve the communications needs of the community. Solutions to this problem have included steps taken by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to double the total frequencies available to public safety agencies. Emerging technologies have also begun examining how to solve the interoperability problem among public safety agencies.
"Land Rush" of the 1990s
NCJ Number
211747
Date Published
1998
Length
1 page
Annotation
This article discusses the problem of police agency interoperability.
Abstract