- FirstNet: Cats and Dogs Living Together

Logo of the PSST-OAC – the 21 Waiver Jurisdictions

Late in June I attended the “Preparing for Public Safety Broadband” workshop hosted by the National Governors’ Association outside of Washington DC today. We’re discussing the States’ (and cities and counties) role in constructing the Nationwide Public Safety wireless Broadband Network (NPSBN), authorized by Congress in February and funded with $7 billion from sale of spectrum. More background on the network is here.

This workshop had about 200 participants with 49 states are represented and quite a number of chief information officers, but also police chiefs, fire chiefs and coordinators of the more traditional statewide land-mobile radio networks used by responders.

Chuck Dowd, Deputy Chief of Communications for NYPD talked on a panel about how remarkable this is – that Mayors and Governors, police chiefs and fire chiefs, agree on the importance of this network. And they all worked together with the Obama Administration and Congress to get the Spectrum Act passed earlier this year.

But, in many senses, the most difficult part of constructing the NPSBN is still ahead. Mistrust between government agencies and functions are historically rampant. The budget crisis of the Great Recession has exacerbated his mistrust, as every agency’s budget has been squeezed.

States don’t trust City and County governments, who may have only their own individual interests in mind. Rural areas don’t trust urban areas. Departments within State governments don’t trust each other – every department often has its own computer servers and applications and even email systems. Cities and counties, in turn, mistrust their States who, they feel, are always trying to take money and dictate unfunded mandates.

(Read the rest of the post on Digital Communities).

- A Peek at the National Broadband Plan

Broadband Wireless

On January 26th Admiral Jamie Barnett of the FCC spoke about the National Broadband Plan, which is now due out on March 17^th (and I understand New York City, Boston and other cities with large Irish-American populations plan to have parades in honor of the plan that day, too!)

As a CTO, I’m so immersed in technology that I’m not sure “broadband” means anything to the average American (if an “average” American exists).   Certainly most Americans are now at least aware of the Internet and use technology in their lives, even if that tech is nothing more than a cell phone or ATM.   But all you have to do is watch the security lines at any airport and see all the laptops and luggables and cell phones and DVD players and other associated smart lumps of plastic dumped on the scanner lines to know that tech is ubiquitous in most people’s lives.

A significant fraction of people know about broadband and what it means.   In Seattle, some 84% of homes have an Internet connection, 75% have something faster than dial-up and 88% have a computer at home.  Of course Seattle’s got a reputation as a city of high tech folks (an image Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and I work hard to polish).   But even nationwide 79% of homes have an Internet connection and 63% are faster than dial-up.  The source for these stats is here.  

These are numbers are hard to fathom when one considers the web didn’t exist 20 years ago,  and most people probably thought “Internet” had something to do with basketball, volleyball, tennis or another “net-centric” sport.

Admiral Barnett heads the Homeland Security and Public Safety Bureau at the FCC.   He’s charged with making wireless spectrum available to government in general and specifically to the law enforcement, firefighting and emergency medical agencies who keep the public safe.   He spoke at the Winter Summit of Association of Public Safety Communications Officials on January 26th, and gave us a glimpse of what the National Broadband Plan will contain. 

Admiral Barnett’s remarks centered on wireless spectrum for use by first responders.  About 10 Megahertz is available nationwide for public safety, but the license for that is held by a  single nationwide organization.     Yet most police, fire and emergency medical agencies are operated by cities and counties.    Given this paradoxical situation, 17 states and cities have requested waivers from the FCC to use that spectrum in their local areas to immediately create networks for their use.  

And why is the spectrum required?   These new wireless networks hold promise that cops in police vehicles can see videos of crimes in progress as they race to crime scenes, or rapidly access building plans, images and video.  Have a peek at a  report prepared by PTI and APCO here for more uses.  

According to Admiral Barnett, those waivers may be granted later this year so we can get started building the network.  The FCC is very interested in public-private partnerships to build the networks because many jurisdictions don’t have funds to construct such networks for themselves.  Luckily, commercial cell phone carriers like Verizon and AT&T, and companies like Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent have signed on in support of this plan, and are developing new networks including  LTE (long term evolution) for not only their own networks but also for public safety use.   This means public safety agencies could use a network built and funded by taxpayers (more resilient, better priority, less costly) for most of their work, but could roam only the commercial carriers’ networks when necessary.   This is in stark contrast to today’s networks, where police/fire radios are incompatible with the cell phone networks.  The best of both worlds!

It looks like the FCC will encourage these partnerships in its plan. 

The FCC also knows that funding will be required to construct these networks.   Admiral Barnett understands funding is required not just to build the networks, but to operate them.  Besides public-private partnerships, the FCC is floating the idea of an Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) to pushing forward on a national public safety wireless network.  We’ll hear more about this on February 10^th.

Finally, Barnett said  “next generation 911” will also be recognized in the national broadband plan.   Right now, the only way to get information to a 911 center is to … well … telephone 911!    But many citizens’ cell phones have the capability to do text messages, take photos and video.   Yet 911 centers have little or no capability to accept such media, which can be critical to rapidly apprehending perpetrators and rendering aid to victims.   We higher-speed land line fiber optic networking between 911 centers and other public safety and government facilities too, and I hope that will be in the Plan.

Twenty years ago, very few people knew of the Internet or Web.   Now it is an indispensible part of most people’s lives and a vital component of our HomeCity security and public safety.  But we need more network SPEED, both wired and wireless.  The National Broadband Plan could be, with a bit of vision by the FCC, a roadmap to the future of the nation.

- A Cop Killer and Broadband

Officer Tim Brenton

On Friday, November 6th at 1:00 PM, five thousand people gathered in Seattle to grieve for Seattle Police Officer Tim Brenton who was murdered in his police cruiser.  At 3:30 PM the killer was caught, after a week of diligent detective work, and through use of video technology.  This tragic incident illustrates why first responders need improved technology, including a modern 4th generation (4G) wireless network.

How do I make the leap from the heartbreaking death of a police officer to the need for more technology, and, in particular, a high-speed wireless network for first responders?

First, I’ll describe Brenton’s murder. Tim Brenton, a ten-year veteran of Seattle’s Police Department, was training a new officer, Britt Sweeney, on the night of October 31st. They were stopped at the side of a street in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood, reviewing Britt’s performance in a car stop.

Another vehicle pulled beside them on the left side of the police cruiser, and opened fire on the officers at point blank range. Sweeney, on the cruiser’s driver’s side, ducked down and the bullets grazed her back, but the shots hit Brenton immediately killing him. The murderer backed up his vehicle, and turned down a side street, being careful not to drive in front of the police cruiser.

The murderer knew every police patrol vehicle had a digital video camera, but that it faced forward. He was careful not to come into the camera’s line of sight.

There were very few clues in the case. The wounded Officer Sweeney fired at the fleeing vehicle, but was unable to get a good look or description of it. There were no other witnesses. Despite tips flowing in, there was little information and, frankly, no good leads.

Detectives started to look for video clues. Seattle has very few video cameras observing streets or intersections, and the murder took place in a residential neighborhood. Every police vehicle has a digital video camera, but the cameras only record when the vehicle has its overhead warning lights flashing or when activated by the police officer. The video is saved to a computer hard drive in the vehicle and offloaded wirelessly when the vehicle returns to the precinct station. The video cannot be directly transmitted from the vehicle because no existing City or commercial wireless network has the bandwidth to do so.

The Seattle Police Department went to work, and examined video footage recorded by all vehicles patrolling that area of that City. Miraculously, even though the video cameras face only to the front to capture car stops and officer conversations with the stopped driver, detectives found a Datsun 210 in the background driving by several of the stops made by various police cars that night.

The detectives, unsure if the Datsun was even involved in the murder, but hoping for a break, broadcast the Datsun’s distinct profile and asked for citizen help to find such a vehicle. And, on Friday the 6th, police received a call of a Datsun 210 covered with a tarp in the parking lot of a suburban Seattle apartment building. They responded and when Charles Monfort walked out toward the vehicle, he pulled a gun on the detectives. He was shot and arrested. In his apartment detectives found the murder weapon as well as improvised explosive devices. Montfort has also been linked to a firebombing of Seattle police vehicles on October 22. 

Monfort had a vendetta against police officers, and undoubtedly would have shot more officers if he had not been caught. Finding him was the result of dogged police work, those videos, and a lot of luck.

What does this say about the state of first responder technology?  First, we need more video. Seattle does have two police vehicles which drive the streets with video constantly running, and using license plate recognition looking for stolen vehicles. But every one of more than 300 patrol vehicles has video. Digital video in police vehicles is a great boon to public safety – the video and audio of every car stop is recorded. This helps quickly resolve complaints from the public about police behavior, as well as providing evidence for crimes such as drunk driving.

But perhaps we should be recording more than just car stops, e.g. continuously recording as police vehicles patrol neighborhoods. And certainly we could use more video in high crime streets and other public spaces. The ability of such video cameras to deter and solve crimes is well documented, notably in the London subway bombings.

But Seattle and other cities have been skeptical and slow to adopt it, largely due to concerns about privacy.  In terms of privacy concerns, video cameras should only observe public spaces such as streets or parks. I’m an advocate not just for deploying more video cameras, but for making almost all such video available online for anyone to view, just like traffic cameras are available online.  The video is, after all, of public spaces, and having more eyes watching for crime not only helps solve or prevent that crime, but also provides some oversight of police use of the video.

Next, we badly need high speed, fourth generation (4G) wireless broadband networking for first responders. Congress has set aside spectrum,  and a number of public safety organizations such as APCO and the PSST have been working to build such a network.   Public safety organizations have even developed standards for such a network.  But funding obstacles remain in the way.

With high speed wireless networking, video from field units – not just police but fire, utilities, transportation vehicles – can be transmitted real-time to dispatch centers, to other vehicles and to emergency management centers. Such real-time video gives police and fire commanders, 911 dispatchers and elected officials a view into what is happening in the field, and will result in more rapid resolution of crimes such as Office Tim Brenton’s murder, as well as better deployment of field officers for any violent crime, problems around schools, hazardous materials, disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes and terrorist incidents.

We got lucky solving Officer Tim Brenton’s murder. This incident is a call for action to put better video and wireless technology to work improving public safety.