This item was posted to Scan-L on April 1, 2000

Cops find fault with radio gear

By Lyda Longa, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The night Atlanta police Officer John Sowa was fatally shot and his partner Pat Cocciolone critically injured, Cocciolone tried to call for help on the police radio attached to her shoulder. The radio system didn't work and no one came to the officers' aide for several hours.

By the time reinforcements arrived, Sowa was dead and Cocciolone was lying in a pool of blood, shot in the head.

A year later, another officer who chased a suspect through a volatile northwest Atlanta neighborhood known for drugs, prostitution and anti-police sentiment, fell in a ditch and injured his leg. He called for help on his radio, but no one heard his cries.

Next to the police handgun, police say the portable radio affixed to an officer's shoulder is the most vital piece of equipment. Without it, a cop can't call for help.

Last month, an Atlanta sergeant filed a grievance with the Police Department, alleging officers are working under hazardous conditions because the radio system is unreliable. Sgt. Thomas Padgett had experienced useless radios on his shoulder too many times.

Though the city purchased $24 million in communications gear in 1995, the radio system has been faulty, often dying out in certain sections of the city known as "dead zones."

Complaints about the crippled radio system have been plentiful during the past three years, but most of the problems have been concentrated in the northwest Atlanta police precinct that covers Bankhead Highway and the neighborhood known as the Bluff.

At least two other precincts, though--the Buckhead precinct and the downtown-Midtown precinct--also have experienced radio trouble, officers there said Friday. Sowa and Cocciolone worked in Buckhead.

Though Padgett declined to comment for this article, his two-page grievance, filed March 8, states the city has known about the bad equipment since 1996.

"The city has had three years to correct this problem," Padgett said. "The city has not and will not fix this problem."

But the Police Department has tried to alleviate the situation, said Maj. Bill Gordon, commander of the department's communications unit. Gordon said the city has agreed to pay for a new antenna--a bi-directional antenna, capable of picking up more signals--that will be installed in a northwest Atlanta park on April 7.

"We are going to test this and if it doesn't work, we'll try something else until we can fix this," Gordon said.

There are no guarantees, however. Gordon said no communication system can eradicate the dead zones that hinder the police radios. The dead zones, he said, are found in areas of the city with deep ditches and other types of uneven terrain. Also, he said the system could malfunction in certain parts of a building.

But Chip Warren, vice president of the police union, scoffed, saying the city should stop gambling with officers' safety and buy better equipment.

According to Padgett's grievance, a representative of Motorola--the company that provides the radios--suggested� in the situation could be fixed if the city installed a repeater, or antenna site in northwest Atlanta.

The site would have cost the city roughly $4 million. The bi-directional antenna, meanwhile, probably will cost taxpayers roughly $10,000.