First responders concerned with communication issues after new statewide system rollout

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — In recent months, the Utah Communications Authority and L3Harris Technologies rolled out a new communications system in Utah for use by first responders across the state; however, it hasn’t been a seamless transition for some agencies.

“It is something that greatly effects our, our communities in which we serve,” said Kevin Murray, President of the Utah Fraternal Order of Police in an interview about the new system. “Where we have 5,200 members statewide, this has become the forefront of our focus right now.”

Since mid-December, 2News received multiple inquiries from law enforcement and fire agencies in Utah who were reporting issues with their handheld radios. All of these issues were reported after the new system rolled out in their specific areas.

2News reached out to numerous police, fire and communications agencies in Utah, but all declined to speak ‘on the record’ for our coverage of what some called ‘a huge issue right now, a huge safety issue for our officers’.

“There’s been officers that have been actively involved in physical altercations by themselves where they’ve needed backup and they’ve requested it, but they haven’t been able to get out on the radio,” said Murray, who spoke to 2News on behalf of law enforcement officers in Utah. “Officer safety is the number one thing that we focus on. We want that person or that officer to return home to their family that night and something as simple as equipment failure — it seems really silly to focus on anything else before we focus on remedying that issue.”

The Utah FOP learned of at least 20 different instances of officers not being able to communicate with dispatch or other officers. They shared three specific issues with 2News:

• In Salt Lake Valley, an officer was involved in a foot chase and attempted to call out a request for help on the radio. After a period of time dispatch reached out as is standard to check on officers, dispatch was informed that the officer had been involved in the chase, requested for help, caught the suspect, placed the resisting suspect in custody all without dispatch hearing the information.
• A police car chase occurred in one county and led to a neighboring county. This chase involved multiple agencies and multiple radio channels. Dispatch was unable to merge the channels together to allow officers to communicate with each other. This led officers participating in the chase to try to find a common radio channel while driving at high speeds. When the chase was terminated, officers on scene had to debrief together to share necessary information on the chase that should have been shared in real time.
• In Summit County, a deputy responded to a 911 hangup alone. When the deputy arrived, they located an individual in a drug induced psychosis, using a knife to cut themself. The deputy, unable to use the radio to communicate, was requesting citizens to call dispatch to advise them of the situation. Deputies, not hearing from the responding deputy, responded to their location and found the dangerous situation and the deputy desperately needed back up.

“We started to compile these stories as we can help get it to the legislature and and help them with the information that they need to get this problem resolved,” Murray said.

Utah Communications Authority is an independent state agency providing administrative and financial support for statewide 911 emergency services and is tasked with maintaining the statewide public safety communications network.

“There’s so many little elements to this, times that by almost 40,000 users on our system, it’s a massive project,” said Tina Mathieu, Executive Director of Utah Communications Authority. “All of it’s a priority because these guys are out there, they risk their lives every day and we’re their provider to provide their communications system so there’s an immense amount of pressure to get everything done yesterday so we have not taken our foot off the gas.”

Mathieu has an extensive history in emergency services and in 911 communications. She spoke at length with 2News about the intricacies with rolling out a new statewide communications system.

Mathieu mentioned some of the early hiccups with clear digital signals have come from agencies not updating firmware on their equipment.

“We have radios on our system that agencies have been using for 15-plus years and a lot of cases, we saw when we cutover where we had said multiple times, ‘hey you need to make sure your firmware’s updated’,” said Mathieu, who mentioned receiving positive feedback from agencies who were able to update their firmware.

UCA signed a contract with L3H in June 2021 to provide a new Project 25 (P25 system), which replaced a legacy Motorola system that Mathieu stated was nearing ‘end of life’. Mathieu said finding replacement parts for the old system was becoming extremely difficult and expensive since manufacturers were no longer producing the pieces to support the critical infrastructure.

“The Statewide P25 system scheduled to be completed by end of 2024 will equip over 144 radio towers with a suite of digital radio features. The new L3Harris Voice, Interoperability, Data and Access (VIDA) services platform integrates critical services, converged communications, and integrated applications into a scalable, feature-rich communications solution to meet diverse Public Safety challenges,” wrote UCA in the February 2024 final draft of their Land Mobile Radio System Strategic Plan. “This new P25 system delivers clear digital audio using the AMBE+2 vocoder, advanced Emergency call options, strong encryption options, increased traffic carrying capability, and spectrum efficiency.”

L3Harris Technologies, a company working in more than 100 countries with a $21 billion annual revenue calls their P25 system “The proven standard for public safety radio communications.”

The L3H website reads under the benefits of P25:

• Delivers exceptional coverage in both urban and rural environments
• Offers mission-critical grade reliability and performance
• Enables interoperability between different public safety agencies, transportation and utility at local, state, federal and tribal levels

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