ALARM BELL No. 8: Radio Tests Cancelled Due to Officer Safety Issues

Seven years after OpenSky radios were brought to the Milwaukee police, and five years into Mayor Tom Barrett’s term, the system was to be tested for seven days. That was in 2009.

The “seven day console” test would see if the radios worked right.

Guess what?

The test had to be cancelled because of concerns for officer safety!

This was revealed as part of 600-pages of Milwaukee Fire Department documents obtained by Citizens for Responsible Government under the Open Records Act.

We’ve looked at the records and determined there were 11 critical alarm bells that Mayor Tom Barrett should have heard to bail out on the failing OpenSky radios. But, Mayor Tom must be a deep sleeper because he hasn’t heard single alarm bell.

He slept when New York cancelled their mega OpenSky contract. He slept when the radios failed. Then when the backup radios failed. He even snoozed when his fire fighters battled a three-alarm blaze without radios.

What the heck is going on here?

Anyway, the seven-day test was cancelled because conducting the test would have put personnel in danger.

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“Halt the test in the interest of officer safety” is how one email described it. “It was agreed by the collective team that officer safety was foremost above the test.

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Yikes, so the radios are so screwed up that if you test them, you can lose contact with officers and firefighters in the field!

We suppose the OpenSky radios are tested daily and they fail daily. And for $20 million, we should turn them in with the receipt and ask for our money back.

If we bought ‘em at Radio Shack that’s what we’d do. But not Mayor Tom. Officer safety isn’t even worth his time.

Click here to read the entire sub-section of open records that contains the above excerpts (things start to get interesting on pages 21-90).  It's one of our favorites as it details many of the OpenSky problems faced not only in Milwaukee but other cities across the U.S.