NYT: Police and EMT radios can talk

By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: July 31, 2008
Emergency medical workers can now contact the police directly via radio. Fire officials use information beamed down from police helicopters. Law enforcement officers and emergency service agencies hold joint drills at high-rise buildings, jails and the city’s tunnels.
Seven years after (emphasis mine) the harsh lessons of the Sept. 11 attacks, New York City has improved the ability of its Police and Fire Departments to operate together. On Wednesday, these and other advances were enumerated before the Federal Communications Commission at a public hearing in Brooklyn on improving public safety through better communications among government and emergency agencies.
Speakers at the hearing focused on the lack of a national broadband public safety network, noting that some cities, including New York, Washington and Philadelphia, had improved agencies’ ability to talk to one another on their local networks, while others had lagged behind.
“It is well past time for us to try to remedy this,” Kevin J. Martin, the commission chairman, said at the start of the hearing. “We have a significant amount of work left to do,” he said in a brief interview during a break. “Some cities and regions have been on the forefront of trying to solve this problem themselves. But the problem is, it has not been solved nationwide.”


Amaaaaaazing! It took them seven years to do something we all would think existed from the day one.