Sending out an S.O.S.: public safety communications interoperability as a collective action problem

Federal Communications Law Journal, June, 2007 by Jerry Brito

  I. INTRODUCTION
 II. WHY DO WE LACK INTEROPERABILITY?
     A. Collective Action Problem
     B. Where Are the Entrepreneurs?
     C. Inefficiency
III. A POSITIVE SELECTIVE INCENTIVE
     A. Spectrum Integration
     B. Case Studies
        1. Walky-Talky
        2. RACOM
        3. O2 Airwave
 IV. ACHIEVING INTEROPERABILITY
     A. Applying the Lessons
     B. Competitive Public Safety Licenses
  V. CONCLUSION

I. INTRODUCTION

On September 11, 2001, officers from the New York City police and fire departments responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center. That morning, police and firefighters entered each of the Twin Towers in an effort to help those inside. Shortly after the South Tower collapsed, an officer in a police helicopter hovering over the scene radioed to his colleagues, "About 15 floors down from the top, it looks like it's glowing red. It's inevitable." (1) Then another police pilot reported, "I don't think this has too much longer to go. I would evacuate all people within the area of that second building." (2)

Police officers inside the building and on the ground heard those warnings and proceeded to evacuate. (3) Most got out. However, because their radios were not compatible with those of the police, firefighters inside the tower could not hear the message. (4) One hundred and twenty-one firefighters died inside the North Tower when it collapsed twenty-one minutes after the first warning was issued over police radio. (5)

This anecdote from 9/11 is perhaps the best way to encapsulate the problem of public safety communications interoperability. Plainly put, if police officers are not able to talk to firefighters in their own city when they both respond to the same event, the results can be disastrous. And it is not just police officers and firefighters who need to talk to each other. Emergencies can overflow to neighboring jurisdictions, requiring cooperation between neighboring agencies. Also, everyday emergencies elicit responses from many actors: police, fire, and Emergency Medical Services ("EMS"), as well as local, state, and federal agencies of every stripe. The attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 saw "900 personnel representing 50 secondary agencies responding to the scene just minutes after the attack [and they] had no means of direct radio communications with first responders." (6) This happens because jurisdictions often overlap. For example, one emergency can take place within the geographical jurisdiction of a police department, a sheriff's office, the state police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"). All must communicate in order to coordinate an effective response.

Unfortunately, however, the agencies and jurisdictions that should be able to talk to each other often cannot. The reason is that their communications systems are not interoperable. That is, because they use different frequencies or transmission standards, one agency's radios cannot receive or transmit messages to another agency's radios. A 2004 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that about a quarter of cities polled did not have a communications link between their police and fire departments. (7) More than eighty percent reported that they did not have the capability to communicate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA"), the FBI, and other federal agencies. (8) Forty-nine percent of cities said they are not interoperable with the state police, and forty-four percent reported an accident within the preceding year in which a lack of interoperable communications made response difficult. (9)

Lack of interoperability among local public safety organizations was nothing new on the morning of September 11, 2001. Eight years earlier, police could not communicate with firefighters just one floor away during the response to the first attack on the World Trade Center. (10) Incompatible emergency communications also handicapped the responses to the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 (11) and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. (12) Little has changed since 9/11.

Cross-jurisdictional interoperability also remains a problem to this day. While Shreveport, Louisiana's fire department radio system allows it to communicate with police, EMS, and fifty other agencies in its region, when the Shreveport firefighters traveled to New Orleans to lend a hand in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, their radios were useless. (13) Police in the area used a different system that was incompatible with Shreveport's radios. (14) Similarly, destroyed infrastructure and the lack of interoperable communications systems forced the Mississippi National Guard and other first responders along the Gulf Coast to exchange information through paper relays and face-to-face meetings, delaying emergency responses. (15)

Not only is the interoperability problem not novel, but it also seems that each time a major emergency exposes the lack of interoperability, a new blue ribbon commission is convened to study the issue. Following the communications failures that affected the first responders during the Oklahoma City bombing, the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA") jointly formed the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee to study emergency communications. (16) That committee studied the issue for a year and issued an 800-page report, which concluded that "unless immediate measures are taken to alleviate spectrum shortfalls and promote interoperability, Public Safety agencies will not be able to adequately discharge their obligation to protect life and property in a safe, efficient, and cost effective manner." (17) Ironically, that report was issued on September 11, 1996. After 9/11, the Department of Justice's ("DOJ's") National Institute of Justice created a National Task Force on Interoperability, which has issued a series of reports. (18) And after Hurricane Katrina, the FCC convened the Independent Panel Reviewing the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Communications Networks. (19) Information about the interoperability problem is therefore not lacking.