"So you are the IT Manager and you were just put in charge of the radio communications..."

Sound familiar?

I recently glanced through an article in the new (November 2013) Public Safety Communications Magazine from APCO. The title of the article “Communications Manager or IT Manager?” made me think of our own business. It shouldn’t matter if you’re a radio technician or IT technician…electronics is electronics, right? I wish I could say it was that easy.

What are the first things you think of when given the slogan ‘Are you ready for some football?!” Many ideas such as food, tailgating, friends and team rivalries are the first to pop into our minds. But what if we didn’t have our Sunday afternoon/nights of football, or what would we have to look forward to on Monday nights after a day at work if the NFL ceased to exist? Fault proof communication is one of the silent, yet very important aspects of running not only a successful game, but a stellar season.

Halloween is right around the corner – costumes are being finalized, trick or treat routes are being mapped, and candy is overflowing. Sometimes with the excitement of such a fun holiday, we forget to remember the basics in terms of safety.  If we let the safety of these little vampires, ghosts, and ballerinas slip to the background of all the enthusiasm, things can go from fun and games to spooky in a matter of minutes.

For Trick or Treaters & Parents:

Cell phones are a great way to keep in touch with the older Halloween goers, or if it’s a relatively small group. But how do you communicate with groups of children who may be old enough to walk down the block, but not own a cell phone!? The same way Police and Fire crews communicate with each other- two way radios. Obviously purchasing high tiered radios aren’t the option we are suggesting, but there are two way radios designed for these types of instances- for relatively cheap in many stores. By sending your ghouls and goblins off in the neighborhood equipped with a  two way radio (or commonly referred to as a walkie talkie) you are able to constantly connect with them at the push of a button.

Holy Whac-a-Mole!

  Have you ever heard the saying, “The only constant in life is change”?  How true it is!  Kids grow-up (too fast by the way), technology changes (believe it or not there was no such thing as a laptop when I was in high school, and cell phones were not available to everyone), employees have unexpected emergencies that take them out of the office (for a while, or they move on to new jobs or retire) ... and somehow you have to learn how to not live in fear of change, but instead to anticipate it and keep it together through it all.  To say it’s a challenge is an understatement.  And it’s how you handle it that makes all the difference in the world.  You can panic and get frustrated or angry (which from experience, and trust me on this one, doesn’t make for a clear head for responding to the change) or you can take a deep breath and look at the change as an opportunity.

Technologies in Next Generation Patrol Vehicles

Motorola Solutions has done more than 5 years of focused research, with hundreds of ride-a-longs, focus groups, simulations and usability studies to help understand the need for police cruisers to bring critical information together in an automatic and intuitive way. Research shows users want vehicle controls that are integrated and easy to use so that actions flow quickly and intuitively when responding to an incident.

As always, we are grateful for each and every one of our customers and employees. We are thankful for all of the opportunities we received this year to partner on many significant projects. We encountered some big challenges but all the people at ChiComm stepped up in a short time frame and addressed these challenges head on. It's thanks to our employees that we are able to continually accommodate our customer's needs and meet their expectations.

ET Phone Home: Smartphones and Crime prevention (Guest Author)

One of the downsides of any form of new technology is that it is inevitably expensive and attractive to thieves. Over the years, burglars have focused on Video Recorders, DVD players, and, now, Flatscreen TVs. Car thieves have moved from car radios via CD players onto SatNavs, although even those are no longer of sufficient value to interest most opportunists.

In the same way, the advent of mobile phones has been responsible for a sharp increase in the number of muggings, mainly with young people as both perpetrators and victims. This particular crime wave has been revitalized over the last couple of years by the launch of expensive smartphones such as the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, etc. These, along with Tablet computers, retain very high re-sale value and are therefore very robber-friendly.

Critical Communications Lessons Learned From NATO

 The recent events of the NATO summit in Chicago has a number of very important lessons that can be applied to our own communications plans for our businesses.

#1 - Effective communication requires immediate access in critical situations.  Messages cannot be delayed by network congestion or distances when situations are rapidly changing.

As protestors got more and more aggressive in demonstrating during the NATO summit, the Chicago Police relied on two-way radio communications to obtain orders directly from Police Supt. Garry McCarthy.  Despite the radio communications amongst officers, miscommunications did occur, and without direct access to clarify, a potentially dangerous situation did not escalate any further than absolutely necessary.  The Police maintained their professionalism, and the demonstration was allowed to resume in an appropriate manner.

Serve and Protect Your Police Force with In Car Digital Video Recording

First things first. For those non-believers and late-bloomers still thinking, “Why record video?” Think about disputes between offenders and officers…how do you determine what really happened? What about all those court dates for minor offenses that are keeping officers in court instead of out on patrol. Think about all the liability risks that come with civilians, old and young, using smartphones with cameras that can record YOU. These devices and applications tie to the lawsuits you may hear about in the news where offenders are giving officers a bad name. Are you keeping up with these concerns? How are you addressing them? While smartphones and instant communication may have started predominantly with the younger generation, it has prevailed across the board in all agencies and to people of all ages. Technology continues to evolve at such high speeds that you can no longer afford to refute the revolution. Besides, with the constant change of technology, digital video isn’t really a luxury anymore, it’s becoming a necessity.

Tell us about some of the technological changes that have been happening in your department.

    "With technology moving so fast, governments and police departments don’t always move as fast, mostly because it costs so much money. So we are usually at the back end of changes and technology. But some of the things we’ve done internally are look at the processes in place and what we do on a day to day basis, and try to apply technology to those things. For example, with parking permissions, we used to fill out a form by hand and one copy would go to the records department and one would go to the officer on the street, etc.  So we asked, how can we take things to the next level? We need to be able to e-mail that document and attach it to an MDC laptop that’s in the squad cars so the officer that’s in that beat gets an email message. Plus we now have a remote printer to get things to our remote location in Bensenville, and it's e-mailed to both records departments. It seems like something that’s no big deal, but when you have a process like this for every task you do, it ends up being really inefficient. So migrating to these new technologies and new ways to do things makes things more convenient, and now our dispatchers can do everything from sitting at their consoles.