Oakland Police, City Council Favorite East Bay Regional Communications Radio System, (EBRCS) Breaks Down

The East Bay Regional Communications System (EBRCS) Radio System, the Alameda County and Contra Costa-County-controlled joint powers authority that the Oakland Police Officers Association (OPOA) has been begging Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to have the City of Oakland spend $21 million to join rather than just spend $15 million to fix Oakland’s own radios, the one I called a “Fucking Waste Of Time” or “FWOT” in my last blog post on the subject, suffered a major fail on Monday.

It’s like Clint Eastwood, in the role of Oakland City Staff, talking to the chair, represented by the Oakland City Council – it just sits there and doesn’t listen or take action. Instead, the Oakland City Council points Oakland into a place where it’s about to make a mistake in having the city join EBRCS, which doesn’t work.

In short, EBRCS just plain broke down in the present. That’s right – EBRCS, what Alameda County said has a mission “To build, own and operate a state-of-the-art P25 compliant communications system for the public agencies within Alameda and Contra Costa counties” – stopped working for a full 30 minutes Monday, April 22nd.

Or, to put it yet another way, the EBRCS Radio System that the Oakland Police Officers Association wants to replace Oakland’s radio system because it has broken down in the past, and the Oakland City Council approved the City of Oakland to get into over staff objections, broke down on Monday.

Yes, the big $100 million EBRCS radio system that touts itself as better and more reliable than Oakland’s own radio system, failed for thirty minutes. The very same EBRCS system that the Oakland City Council says “we must join so we can give our officers something better” has failed. By contrast, Oakland’s radio system, in point of fact, hasn’t failed since at least August of 2012.

This is a total howler! And its just deserts.

Here’s the email sent out to about 60 people representing EBRCS city police and fire member officials and Alameda County health and human services officials by Tiffany Chan, who represents the County of Alameda Radio Services Group and was communicating what to do because the EBRCS went down Monday, hence the email title EMERGENCY:

Subject: EMERGENCY

EBRCSA Users.

Please be aware the system is in site trunking for the Southwest Alameda County Cell of the EBRCS system.

Please use backup radios. ITD Radio Services is currently working on it, and will update as soon as available.

Thank you,

Tiffany J. Chan
County of Alameda
ITD Radio Services Group

Then the man responsible for the East Bay Regional Communications System’s daily operation, and over Ms. Chan, Randy Hagar, who’s Linkedin profile says is Deputy Director, Information Technology Department, Alameda County. Public safety communications systems, Astro trunked radio network, CCTV, microwave radio, Emergency Operations Center Communications Unit Leader, sent out an email admitting that the system failed. And why did it collapse? Because a technician pulled the wrong cord! That’s right. The $100 million radio system the County of Alameda has pushed the City of Oakland to get into, failed because a single cord was pulled out. Read the email:

 

Subject: EBRCS radio system
EBRCS radio users, PSAPs managers and supervisors,

I would like to reassure you of the reliability of the EBRCS radio system by explaining what had happened yesterday, but also offer our assistance to train those of you who may have experienced difficulty in using your back up radios.

One of our technicians responded to an alarm condition at the San Leandro Hills site which serves as the prime site for the EBRCS southwest cell, supporting the cities of Fremont, Union City, Newark, Hayward, San Leandro and parts of the unincorporated County. After consulting with the manufacturer of the equipment, the technician pulled a cable in order to take measurements. He quickly realized that the cable supplies more than just an alarm condition, causing the entire cell to go down, then immediately reconnected the cable.

The loss of signal to the prime site GPS receivers caused the entire EBRCS southwest site to go into Failsoft mode, which is a self-healing mode. The “self-healing” process includes a sequential reboot of critical infrastructure throughout the southwest cell and takes about 30 minutes time.

I have conducted a postmortem with staff to determine how this could have been avoided and updated some of our procedures.

Please contact me or our Radio Services shop at 510.667.(withheld by Zennie) if you would like to schedule training or have any concerns regarding your back up radios.

Randy Hagar
Deputy Director, ITD
Alameda County

The Oakland City Council now basks in the dark glow of what is shaping up to be one totally stupid and costly mistake that not one Oakland Councilmember voted to prevent.

Not one.

And on top of that, Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby didn’t even weigh in with one of her vaunted reports!

Here’s how the vote went down on January 21st 2014, when the Council elected “to authorize the City Administrator to enter into negotiations with EBRCS and return to Council in 90-120 days with proposed negotiation terms and a funding and transition plan, and include a funding plan for the purchase and maintenance of radio units” – eight to zip. With Oakland Councilmember Noelle Gallo (District Five) moving the motion, and legendary Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid (District Seven, and who should know better) seconding the motion.

It’s not that there’s no turning back, but is there anyone on the Oakland City Council who’s not so afraid of the Oakland Police Union that they have to knuckle under to them and join EBRCS – which did something the Oakland radio system didn’t do, break down?

So we’re going to junk our system, which needs refurbishment but hasn’t broken down, for the FWOT, or EBRCS, which has broken down.

Does that make any sense to you?

Where’s the leadership in Oakland?

Ah, that word again.

Oakland’s City Council seems to have taken a vacation from it.

Let’s do the tally: failure to sue to Golden State Warriors for treating Oakland in a publicly abusive way? Check. Willingness to join an Alameda County radio system that breaks down over an Oakland one that hasn’t? Check!

Keep adding them up, Oakland City Council. Keep adding those major fails up.

Stay tuned.