It happened to a Bend Police officer in a foot chase in downtown Bend and again to an officer on a domestic violence call who was forced to use her personal cellphone to reach 911 dispatchers. Their calls for backup were dropped by a brand-new, cutting-edge digital radio system.

Then, on Dec. 27, the system went down completely, affecting nearly all on-duty personnel at the multiple law enforcement agencies in Central Oregon that use it. Bend Police officers were so concerned for their safety that night-shift officers doubled-up, two to a squad car, until they were satisfied the immediate issue had been resolved three days later.

In the past two weeks, with media coverage publicizing issues with the new radio system, much blame has been placed on the vendor, Harris Corp. But decisions made by the Deschutes County 911 district and other local agencies also contributed to the system’s failures, according to local officials and Harris employees.

The new system is used by nearly every law enforcement agency in Deschutes County.

Several temporary and long-term fixes are underway, but county officials say they will wait until the end of February before considering legal action against Harris.

“There were some things Harris could have done better,” said Bend Police Chief Jim Porter. “But we need to own our part of this.”

A complete network

In 2014, a large interagency mass-casualty drill forced local officials to confront several longstanding issues with the Deschutes County 911 Service District’s aging “800” analog radio system, Porter said. They noticed problems with signal strength and connectivity among the multiple agencies. There were also dead spots in the coverage area, notably around the Central Oregon Community College campus.

That year, Deschutes County 911 hired a communication consultant to design upgrades to its system. The report drafted by Sparling Corp. estimated that constructing a new digital system would cost approximately $23 million and would require seven transmission towers to complete the network.

Moving to a digital radio system improves signal strength inside buildings, helps filter out background noise and allows agencies to encrypt their signals to limit who can listen in — a big plus for many agencies, according to Harris representatives who spoke to The Bulletin.

The initial contract with Harris was signed in March 2016 for around $5.8 million, which included a $278,500 state grant.

In its procurement process, the district never looked at vendors aside from Harris, in part because Harris was already in use by the Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon State Police, according to Steve Reinke, director of Deschutes County 911.

Reinke said by partnering with the ODOT State Radio Project, which uses Harris products, the district was able to secure a price much lower than the estimate in the Sparling report.

The system went live in the last week of July. User-reported problems popped up right away, and continued consistently until December, when they doubled, according to data provided by the district to The Bulletin through a records request. The No. 1 complaint was audio quality, followed by missed or dropped calls — there have been hundreds of them — and varying volume levels .

In December, the Bend Police officers union filed a grievance with Oregon OSHA.

“We basically want a system that works, and right now; we don’t have that,” said Leo Lotito, president of the Bend Police Association.

The Harris representatives said they received no complaints until December, at which point they dedicated resources to solving the problems.

“There may have been interoperability problems as early as go-live, but they weren’t shared with us,” said Scott Tangeman, regional program manager for Harris.

Reinke disputed this.

“The company’s project engineer was on site multiple times in the months between go-live and December to address complaints about the system’s performance,” Reinke said.

Last fall, after hundreds of dropped and garbled calls had been reported by local emergency services personnel, Deschutes County 911 made its final payment to Harris.

Harris was under contract to deliver a level of service, namely an audio quality of MAQ-3 (out of a possible five), and it reached that level, said Brian Beatty, regional sales manager for Harris.

Next steps

Porter, Bend’s police chief, thinks local officials underestimated the complexity of the new system they purchased.

The service district’s member agencies use different brands of radio on different radio frequencies, and they all need to be synced to the same new system.

“It became obvious right away that we did not have the technical resources,” Porter said.

According to the contract, Deschutes County 911 requested removing several line items for training courses.

The move saved the county around $41,000.

The Harris representatives said local leaders would have been in a better position when problems started had they opted to train more of their staff.

Instead, they opted to purchase training only for administration-level personnel.

The Harris representatives pointed to a broader issue: Moving to a digital system takes some getting used to, especially for more experienced personnel, who are more accustomed to working with analog systems.

The representatives compared the move to switching from LPs to CDs — with CDs, there’s none of the buzzing in the background that comes from a needle in a vinyl groove.

“It definitely takes some getting used to,” said Beatty, of Harris.

Additionally, Porter said local leaders erred in deviating from Sparling’s original engineering designs, namely electing to employ five transmission towers in the Bend area, rather than the recommended seven.

The Harris reps agreed.

“Obviously, if they would have had seven instead of five, they would have better coverage,” Tangeman said.

Reinke said permitting issues prevented the district from adding the two towers — one on Jackpine Ridge and one in Redmond.

This week, the Deschutes County Commission, which oversees Deschutes County 911, approved adding a temporary staff position: $78,000 for an owner’s rep for two months. There was also a proposal to add a permanent full-time engineering position to help manage the new radio system.

Harris’ representatives said many localities dedicate staff engineers to help shepherd their agencies through the analog-to-digital upgrade.

Work is expected to conclude soon on a temporary radio site at Overturf Butte that would cover much of the area the Jackpine site was intended to cover.

Reinke said the district will look at adding the proposed Redmond tower, which isn’t considered as critical as the Jackpine site, after the other radio issues are resolved.

County Commissioner Tammy Baney said she’s been looped in on the significant issues with the new radio system only for about six weeks.

She said the county has set a “30-day deadline” with Harris before it employs “next steps” Feb. 28.

“We don’t need to use Feb. 28,” she said. “But there has to be something so we don’t just keep kicking this down the road.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0325, gandrews@bendbulletin.com