Sunday, May 12, 2024
For the past several years, the Granbury Police Department has attempted to expand its communication with other first responders — not only in Hood County, but in other counties around the metroplex.
But now, Granbury’s new regional radio network may be the first of its kind in Texas, allowing the Granbury Police Department to connect with several first responders in the area like Texas EMS, Air Evac and CareFlite medical transport companies, Hood and Erath County Sheriff’s Offices and Volunteer Fire Departments, Stephenville Police and Fire Departments, Tarleton State University, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and the United States Marshals Service.
Although Granbury’s regional radio network officially launched a few months ago, the new communication tool has been in the works for several years.
In fact, Chief of Police Mitch Galvan explained that GPD’s attempts to obtain an updated radio system date all the way back to 2006.
“Every other year, we have a graded exercise for the nuclear plant, and we kept getting dinged because we didn't have any interoperability, communication-wise, with anybody in Somervell County, or any other agency for that matter,” Galvan told the HCN. “So we, along with the sheriff, started trying to get what's called a P25 radio system that will allow us to talk to other agencies on the law enforcement network, and it failed miserably, because at the time, the quote that we got was just astronomical, and it just didn't pan out.”
He explained that moving forward, the GPD continued to have interoperability issues with major events, like the 2022 Chalk Mountain fire in Somervell County — where more than 6,700 acres burned.
“We could talk to the sheriff's office while we were in the cars but couldn't talk to them on our handheld radios,” he said. “It was pretty rough.”
In April 2019, the GPD officially started a discussion during a workshop with the Granbury City Council and Hood County Commissioners Court about implementing a P25 radio system.
Galvan said that previously, the GPD had been leaving the decision up to the county as it wasn’t gaining any ground — that is, until City Manager Chris Coffman spoke up during the meeting.
"He said, ‘I don't care what we have to do. Get it done. We're not gonna wait,’ so we made contact with radio companies, and went through that process of them sitting down and going over what the needs were, and what we wanted to do with the network,” he said. “We wanted the network to be able to expand regionally and not just within the county.”
In May 2021, a contract was signed with American technology company L3Harris, and the new radio network officially went live in August.
“It’s been a two-year process of getting it designed and implemented,” Galvan said. “A lot of stuff had to happen to get it to the point to where it is now.”
FEATURES
Galvan said one of the features with the new system is a mobile app from L3Harris called BeOn, which extends the capabilities of a Land Mobile Radio (LMR) network to smartphones, tablets and PCs. The app provides secure Push-to-Talk (PTT) communications far beyond the boundaries of regional radio systems, according to l3harris.com.
“No matter where I am in the world, I can get on that app and toggle the radio, so if I'm away and something's happening and I need to be able to communicate, I can do that via my phone just like I would a radio,” Galvan explained.
Although the Granbury Police Department is still finalizing the details, Deputy Chief Cliff Andrews said Granbury’s regional radio network will be the “first national deployment” of the Live Earth system — a cloud-based data visualization platform delivering real-time data feeds in a single, simplified view.
Using GPS with a radio transmission, the Live Earth system will allow a mobile radio or car radio to send out a transmission every five minutes that contains the individual’s GPS coordinates.
"It tracks the physical location of all the mobile radios, so even when they're out of a car, we can see where they're at, and where they're going, so if we ever lose contact with anybody, then it comes up,” Andrews said.
Another interesting feature, he said, is that if an officer finds himself in an emergency, he can press the emergency button on the radio and the channel will automatically open and transmit what’s taking place to other surrounding officers.
"If they're disabled or injured in any way, and they can't get to it, they hit the emergency button or declare an emergency — or remotely, somebody can declare an emergency for them — then they'll get a period of time of typically 20 seconds where they can transmit, and then the channel closes, and everybody can talk, and then that repeats until the dispatcher or the emergency communicator clears the emergency for the officer,” Andrews said. “So, if the officer needs assistance, we can get it to him pretty quickly.”
"The fact that it does that without him having to do it, because if you're struggling with somebody, it's going to be very hard for you to reach up and hold that mic down and try to talk, so him just hitting the emergency button and then being able to talk is huge,” Galvan said, chiming in. “He's able to say what he needs to say, and we're able to hear what's going on, and we're already going to know where he is because of the Live Earth, so we're actively responding and knowing what's going on and where he is.”
Andrews said the radios are also tied into a state identification plan, so if a situation like the Uvalde school shooting were to occur with many federal, state and local officers responding, everyone will know who is transmitting on any network due to the state identification number.
“The state identifier that chief has on his radio, he can take that down there, they look at the radio, take his identifier from his radio, plug it into their P25 system and that radio is identified as Chief Galvan of Granbury on their network,” Andrews explained. “It's locally controlled by us, but it's issued through the state and tracked at the state level, so everybody knows whose radio that is on any network that they're roaming on.”
SIGNAL STRENGTH
Not only does the new radio network have an abundance of useful and beneficial features, but its signal strength is much stronger than it has been in the past.
Galvan explained how previously, GPD officers were unable to transmit radio signals out when they were stationed at Granbury High School, Lake Granbury Medical Center or Walmart.
"Our handheld radios wouldn't transmit out because they're large concrete structures, so we told them going in, ‘We have to be able to communicate inside these buildings, so our handheld radios need to be able to get out of these buildings,’” he said.
After identifying every building and structure that posed a barrier in getting communication out, a GPD officer and a consultant on the project traveled to every location and tested radio signal strengths in various rooms — with minimal issues.
"There was one or two spots in the high school,” Galvan said. “One was in a closet in the science room somewhere that they had trouble getting out of, and I think there was another dead spot, but other than that, we were transmitting out of all those buildings.”
Galvan added that certain areas in Granbury City Hall and city parks also posed an issue before in transmitting a signal — but now, the problem is almost nonexistent.
"Our radios will get out anywhere in the county, and in Stephenville and in Glen Rose,” he said. “He (Andrews) lives in Glen Rose, and he gets on his handheld radio and talks to dispatch from his house; that's never been able to be done before.”
Galvan expressed the seriousness in the coverage area of the handheld radios, as it is “vital” for the officers to communicate outside of their vehicle no matter where they are.
"Let's say they were chasing somebody on foot. You wouldn't know what was going on until they got through and got back to the car on what was happening, so that was always a very dangerous situation for our guys, because they just had no radio coverage whatsoever,” he said. “So, the fact that the coverage is so strong now in the county and in Somerville and in Erath County, it just makes you feel much better to be able to get out when you need to.”
IMPACT
Although the regional radio network has only been live for a few months, Galvan and Andrews explained how a recent situation in Erath County allowed the Granbury Police Department to keep tabs on what was taking place in case they needed to step in.
“We had a SWAT call out in Stephenville yesterday and everything flowed to where everybody got on the channel they needed to get on and we were all talking; that would never have happened before,” Galvan said. “Our SWAT team would have showed up and our radios wouldn't have been able to communicate with their radios.”
"The SWAT team was working in Erath County in the city of Stephenville, and I was sitting on my desk listening to everything that they were doing, so I could monitor it just from the office,” Andrews said. “It's the first time we've ever been able to do that. It's pretty nice.”
With Erath County already in the network and Somervell County following close behind, Galvan said the police department will soon be in talks with the counties Parker and Tarrant to potentially join the network, as well.
"The next step in our communication system will tie into Parker County's communication system, and in Tarrant County's regional system, which includes Johnson counties, and inner cities,” Andrews said. “The next step for us now is to work that configuration and make sure our system talks to the other systems around us. There’s a lot of backend work that's going to take place there, but that's where we're headed now.”
"Our ultimate goal, as it is, is to try and get as many of these other networks around the metroplex as we can on one big conglomerate talking to each other, so that if we leave here going in the metroplex, we can still communicate with them,” Galvan said. “It's going to be extremely valuable to us and anybody west that joins this network to be able to communicate, well, forever which is just absolutely huge.”
Galvan said the whole project took a ton of work, but that Andrews was the one who was really working tirelessly to get it up and running, noting he had to physically touch and program every handheld and car radio — which added up to just over 1,100 radios in total.
Andrews added that Shawn Maguire and Tyler Brown of the Hood County Emergency Communications Center were instrumental in helping him get the job done.
With first responders using Granbury’s new regional radio network, they will have a greater ability to deliver life-saving emergency services every day.
“The benefit to the county is immeasurable because it just ensures that anything that happens here, we're going to all be able to talk to each other without issues, whereas before that was never the case,” Galvan said. “I'm glad that it's finally up. We've still got some pieces of it that need to come up live, but we're happy that it's finally operational and functioning.”
He added that he credits Coffman and the Granbury City Council for “stepping up, seeing the need and getting it done.”
"If it wasn't for them realizing that we had a big problem here, and taking the step to do it, we'd still be operating on the old way,” Galvan said.
