The RI Police Chiefs Association held a meeting in Bristol on Tuesday, Aug. 16, hosted by Chief Kevin Lynch, The incoming President of the group. The meetings are monthly opportunities for Chiefs across the State to network and share information. This month, the event also included a presentation by Todd Early, Director of the AT&T FirstNet Program.

FirstNet is a communications network born of one of our darkest days. Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the tragedy of which was compounded by the fact that first responders on the ground could not communicate with those in the towers, the 9/11 Commission recommended the establishment of a single, interoperable network for public safety.

Nearly a decade of lobbying led to Congress establishing the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) in 2012. It’s a public safety network that allows local, state, tribal and federal public safety agencies across the country to communicate with one another, and prioritizes their communications when emergencies or other events impact the network.
Now, that capability has been brought together as a mobile office under one roof in the FirstNet Connected Cruiser.

“We've got a lot of cool gizmos and gadgets here,” said Corey Donahue, Sales Executive for AT&T FirstNet, who was outside the meeting with a pair of vehicles so that the Chiefs could see the technology in action.

The mobile office allows first responders to coordinate with confidence — and save time — reducing and eliminating time spent traveling to the office for reports, or performing video uploads and other office functions that can now be performed directly from the first responder vehicle. Perhaps most importantly, high-powered equipment assures that officers will be able to communicate in areas with limited coverage, and in the event that police push-to-talk land mobile radios (LMRs) are out of range.
In an emergency, FirstNet gets priority.

“The SIM cards that we put into all these let those towers around the area know that these are the number one priority, and everyone else can wait,” said Donahue.

“There's there's currently 3.3 million customers on FirstNet nationwide, and that represents about 21,000 departments, police, fire, DPW, school systems,” said Luis Gonzalez, First Net Regional Consultant. “In total, there's just over 3 million customers already on FirstNet.” The Connected Cruisers are such a new addition to this system, they have only been rolled out for the Texas State Police.

The technology in the connected cruiser is customizable, and obviously different communities would have different needs. But if the feedback from local chiefs is any indication, it won’t be long before wide adoption of this technology will be saving lives across the country.

“Technology is driving our business,” said Lynch. “And certainly there are people that are out there that use this technology against us, so we have to be on an even par. It used to be guns…now it's the technology. The job has changed.”

Chief Matthew Moynihan of South Kingstown was especially impressed with the communications coverage, admitting that topography and other impediments have caused problems with police radios in South Kingstown.

“They don’t penetrate everywhere, so that's a problem,” he said. “We talk about school safety, and if we send officers in, we need to be able to communicate what's happening inside of the school.”

“Just the other night [referring to the Victory Day incident on the Block Island Ferry] there was a mutual aid request and we had North Kingston, Narragansett, Charlestown coming down to help. Having the capability to effectively communicate with all those agencies made all the difference.”