“It’s going to be a game changer for all communications going forward.” That’s what Director of Athens/Limestone County 911 Brandon Wallace said about the new P25 communication system that is being put in place over the next several months.

The P25 radio system is a digital radio system that will allow emergency services, including county and city law enforcement, fire departments, EMS and other departments to be able to communicate more efficiently. The system will be a welcome replacement for the now outdated system put in place several decades ago.

“The city and the county are really in a joint venture in a radio system. All the individual departments are on different radio systems. They can’t talk to each other. Really, the city fire department and city police department can be on the same wreck and can’t talk to each other while they are standing feet apart,” Wallace said.

He added, “The big thing with the P25, the P25 is a standard. If you are going to spend any kind of money —federal or state — on a radio system, it has to meet x,y,z, for P25.”

“Currently, our radios are very, very poor. I have sunk a lot of money into them the past year. An officer right here in town couldn’t get out for whatever reason. That just comes with the number of buildings going up. The more you build, the more there is interfering with your signal. That digital is going to stop that,” Limestone County Sheriff Joshua McLaughlin said. “We have a hard time communicating with any of our officers right now. It works better than it did, but we still have a lot of issues. Just yesterday, a deputy was trying to call in something and his service and signal was so terrible, he had to move around until he could find a better location. If he had been calling for help, we wouldn’t know.”

The City of Athens recently bid out their infrastructure which includes the towers, all equipment on the towers, and the equipment that goes to dispatches – everything that makes the radio system work. The city approved the purchase of a P25 communication system from Motorola Solutions Inc. at the cost of $1,839,252.46.

The County did the same and accepted the bid for the infrastructure but will rebid the radios for the system. They awarded the bid for infrastructure and repeaters to Motorola Solutions Inc. in the amount of $2,509,991.95 to come from AARPA funding.

The systems are required to be built to provide 95 percent coverage, but McLaughlin anticipates 100 percent coverage in Limestone County. The county will have a tower location in West Limestone, and the city will have one on Commercial Drive.

“All this joins back to a bigger system in Huntsville. It’s a hub and spoke system,” Wallace said.

Operations Manager for Athens/Limestone County 911 Taylor Murphy said that the safety of emergency service personnel is always the top priority.

She said, “That is the overall – to make sure you have that constant contact with them in the bad situations. When things don’t go right, you want to be able to make sure you have that contact with your officers, firefighter, paramedics, and EMS personnel. It is essential that you have that contact with them and this P25 system doesn’t limit that area. Even if an officer is across county lines, they can still have contact with their dispatch.”

Wallace and McLaughlin gave several examples of recent events that would have been easier on law enforcement and other first responders if the P25 communication system were in place

“A good example is what just happened in Dallas County where their jail didn’t have a roof and the inmates were relocated. Well, several departments went that way, and they couldn’t communicate. Say that were to happen here and we are on digital, we have Huntsville, Decatur, Madison County and others coming to help respond to it, they would be able to just click over to the right frequency on their own radios and we would be able to communicate instead of using cellphones, which may be down,” McLaughlin said.

He added, “When my officers get out in West Limestone, sometimes they have no radio contact or cell phone contact. This is going to fix that issue, which is a safety issue for us.”

McLaughlin explained that 911, the volunteer fire departments, school boards, EMS, Athens City Fire and other emergency departments will be able to join the system, thus streamlining communications. With the overlapping of Huntsville, Madison, Athens, Limestone County, and Decatur, the P25 will allow the neighboring departments to better communicate.

The system should be operational by late summer or fall, according to Wallace. He said, “Its one of those things that’s been needed; it’s been wanted; and it’s been wished for, and it has finally grown to a public safety concern that we have to fix.”