Press Release

Massachusetts Firm Selected to Install New State-of-the-Art Oakland County Radio Communications System

PONTIAC, MI (January 18, 2002) -- The Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System (CLEMIS) Advisory Board, an organization representing more than 100 law enforcement agencies in southeast Michigan, has unanimously approved the selection of a Massachusetts company, which has a regional office in Troy, to install a new state-of-the art radio communications system in Oakland County.

M/A-Com, whose parent company Tyco Electronics, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the world, was awarded the contract over Motorola, which was the only other vendor to bid on the project. The CLEMIS Advisory Board joined the Radio Oversight Sub-committee and full Oversight Committee in unanimously approving the selection of M/A-Com, thus culminating a nearly six year effort to modernize radio communications in Oakland County.

"This will be the first radio communications system of its kind in the entire state of Michigan," said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson. "This is a digital system that functions more like a computer than a traditional radio system."

When the system is installed and fully operational, a process that is expected to be completed by 2004, all police, fire and EMS agencies in the county will be able to communicate with one another over 32 radio frequencies. The current radio system does not have this inter-operability which in the past has created severe problems during mutual aid situations like the Wixom Plant shooting in 1996 and the crash of Flight 255 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in 1987.

"Oakland County citizens will enjoy a safer environment and benefit from improved police, fire and EMS response times along with better coordination of effort during major incidents because of the new radio communications system," said Farmington Hills Police Chief William Dwyer who also chairs the CLEMIS consortium. "It also means that during mutual aid situations, public safety agencies will be able to communicate with one another on the same frequency, unlike the Wixom Ford Plant shooting when this was not possible."

Dwyer was among several police chiefs and then Oakland County Sheriff John Nichols who sought and received Patterson's support for the development of an improved radio communications system.

Deputy Assistant Oakland County Executive Robert Daddow, who oversees the CLEMIS program, says it will take approximately four months to negotiate details of the multimillion dollar contract with M/A-Com. Daddow says the new radio communications system, which has the capability of transmitting data, will greatly improve efficiency and public safety.

The new system will provide public safety agencies with a variety of options. For example, they can scrap the existing system entirely and switch to the new one. They can retain parts of the old system and phase in the new one over time or they can keep the existing legacy system and simply tie in to the new one through a gateway which will also provide them with inter-operability with any other police or fire agency in Oakland County.

For further information, please contact Bob Dustman, Media & Communications Officer, at (248) 858-1048.