Cops deny 'radio shambles' report

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 08 Nov 2007

The police deny its radio network in the city is a shambles and is putting the lives of officers at risk, as alleged in a front page story in a Johannesburg daily.

The Star newspaper reported today that the new R600 million Tetra (terrestrial trunked radio) communication system, launched by president Thabo Mbeki, in Gauteng last week, "has crippled communication at police stations across Johannesburg".

It quotes anonymous police officers as saying "since management began rolling out the digital network - aimed at improving police response times - many of them have been without radio communication because either their vehicles have not yet been fitted with the radios, or they have not been issued with handheld radios".

However, police provincial spokesman superintendent Eugene Opperman says the Altech-installed Tetra network is not yet switched on in Johannesburg and, therefore, cannot be blamed for radio trouble in the city.

Opperman says police last week commissioned the Midrand 10111 contact centre and, at the same time, migrated all calls and radio traffic from the Vaal policing area to the centre. Each of the other Gauteng policing areas will be migrated in turn, starting with Soweto, where work is under way.

The province's other policing areas are Johannesburg, Pretoria, the West Rand and Ekurhuleni.

Learning from eNatis

"We don't want a situation like eNatis," Opperman said in reference to the troubled "big bang" implementation of the Department of Transport's electronic National Traffic Information System. "That is why we are rolling out in phases. We want to identify problems and fix them before we bring in another area."

He says the rollover between the old analogue system and Tetra should be completed by the middle of next month. "Tetra is 100% operational in the Vaal Rand and we've got very good feedback from the officers on the ground as to how it is working."

Police officers and technical staff, speaking to ITWeb at last week's launch, also referred to the perils of "big bang" implementations and the lessons learned from the eNatis debacle.

Opperman says the Tetra roll-out in Johannesburg was affected by the unavailability of some preferred hilltops for radio masts. "Most are in nature reserves and places like that where they would have been in the way of bird and butterfly migrations or on frog nesting sites."

As a consequence, existing towers are in the process of being converted.

Analogue woes

Meanwhile, Opperman says the old analogue radios are still fully functional. "I have checked and all police stations in Johannesburg have radios for their operational people."

He says the gripes of the anonymous officers described in The Star report belie a spate of recent police successes. "Sure, people are talking over each on the same frequency, but that's normal, especially early on in an incident. You can't call that a 'shambles'."

Opperman notes that Tetra will also fix that type of problem.