Torrington's police chief has one Christmas wish - a radio system that works as advertised.
Chief Michael Maniago says the city's new Kenwood NexEdge system, which is not compatible with other digital radios, has been dropping transmissions and jeopardizing officer safety.
The radios have been problematic since they went on line in June, replacing an 800 MHz system that kept the police and fire departments on different bands.
Now the two agencies are on VHF high band, but only the police operate with encryption, and it's only police transmissions that are dropping out.
Shortly after the new radios were placed in service, Torrington's dispatching was switched to Litchfield County Dispatch, a third-party private agency that uses high band almost exclusively to tone out volunteer fire departments in a 19 town region.
The police chief said in published reports that he is a dissatisfied customer, and he wants quick action from the Kenwood corporation since the local vendor, Northwest Communications of Harwinton, has been unable to solve the problem.
Northwest would not comment for this article.
Chief Maniago told the Republican American newspaper that he wants an immediate remedy without further cost to taxpayers.
Critics have observed that NexEdge is commonly used by businesses and colleges, but generally hasn't been adopted by police departments in the U.S. Instead, most digital police radios are compliant with APCO Project 25, the accepted interoperability standard.
It's unclear whether Kenwood was the low bidder during the city's request for proposals in 2010.
In its sales literature, Kenwood describes NexEdge as compatible with older analog radio systems, but inherently secure because its digital transmissions can't be monitored on scanners.
NexEdge boasts superior voice quality in fringe coverage areas, message storage and paging, and ability to use the Internet to link transmitter and trunk sites, rather than leased phone lines.
Software is available to decode non-encrypted NexGen audio and other formats, through SourceForge.net, a freeware sharing site.
Torrington has a population over 35,000, making it the largest city in Litchfield County.
Comments