New York, NY – Radio Dead Spots Throughout The Tunnel System Put Transit Police At Risk.

New York, NY – The Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, of New York doesn’t want to talk about its $140 million radio communications system By E.A. Technologies, a company that develops communications networks for public transit systems, that is bogged down by so much interference that New York City transit police refuse to use it.

“We’re not going to comment until the police tell us it’s fixed,” an MTA spokesperson said.

the system hasn’t been turned on yet because the MTA found antenna cables covering 72 miles of the subway system had deteriorated to such an extent that they could not carry a signal. According to news reports, it will cost the authority an additional $36 million to repair.

The system is so bad , You could be calling for help and no one hears you,” Brown said. “Sometimes you’re wrestling with [a suspect], and you have to pray that maybe a passenger walks by and you can ask that person to run up to the token booth or the telephone, dial 911 or go find someone to tell that an officer is having a problem and his radio isn’t working.”

The unreliability of radio communications has been a hot topic with officers for decades, Lamano said. It is such a prevalent problem that when training new officers assigned to the transit detail, veterans instruct them to stand in specific areas when attempting to send a radio communication and to recognize that the absence of normal chatter for more than 5 or 10 minutes means they should move to another location. [mobiletechnology]