Detroit's Emergency Dispatch System Fails

dstates writes "For most of Friday, police and firefighters in Detroit were forced to operate without their usual dispatch radio when the emergency dispatch system failed. The radio system used for communication between 911 dispatchers and Detroit's police, fire and EMS crews went down around 5:30 a.m. Friday morning, causing a backlog of hundreds of calls and putting public safety at risk. Michigan State Police allowed Detroit's emergency system to use the state's communication towers, but access was restricted to top priority calls out of fear of overloading the State system. More than 60 priority-1 calls and more than 170 non-emergency calls were backed up. With no dispatch to communicate if something went wrong and backup was needed, police were forced to send officers out in pairs for safety concerns on priority-1 calls. Detroit's new police chief, James Craig, says he's 'appalled' that a redundant system did not kick in. The outage occurred only days after Craig took office. The $131 million Motorola system was installed in 2005 amid controversy over its funding. Spokesmen for Motorola said parts of the system were regularly maintained but acknowledged that backup systems had not been tested in the past two years. They said the problem was a hardware glitch in the link between dispatch and the individual radios. As of 9 p.m. Friday, a Motorola spokesman said the system was stable and the company would continue troubleshooting next week."

Comments

well

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing their police force, the 911 outage might have saved some lives.

Re:well

[Bigbutt]

Technically 911 was working. It was the communication between the dispatchers and the responders.

[John]

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[Anonymous Coward]

Like it would really matter. Do any other states call 911 and get put on hold?

Duhhhh....

[Mr. Dop]

...its Detroit! Michigan is the only reason why both California and Florida dont fall off into the Ocean. It sucks that much.

Expected

[girlintraining]

Detroit has had massive funding and infrastructure problems for some time now. It's a dying city with much of the suburbs either abandoned, being reclaimed by nature, and generally being both in appearance and substance as a 3rd world country. It's so bad it has gotten national attention -- an emergency financial planner was sent in to try to right their budget, with limited success.

You can't judge Detroit the same way as you could, say, Chicago. They're no longer really part of the first world. This wouldn't be news if it happened in Afghanistan, for example. It's a sad state of affairs, but this is the inevitable result of a slide into the third world... our bridges and other key infrastructure is also rotting. Detroit is just foreshadowing what will happen to many of our cities over the next 15-20 years as our economy continues to slide into the ocean of wealth inequity.

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[sjames]

The thing is though, all of TFAs indicate that the city had a valid contract with Motorola to maintain the system including routine testing. In spite of that, no testing happened. While your observations may have bearing in general, in this instance it seems like a well known vendor with a (perhaps undeserved in retrospect) good reputation is the source of the problem.

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[instagib]

Good analysis. The mentioned wealth inequity, the poverty, crime, lack of education, and corruption result in a vicious, almost unbreakable circle. It's like a real life experiment and illustrates why 3rd world countries mainly stay the way they are.

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[mjpollard]

If you're talking "suburbs" within the Detroit city limits, then yes, I agree with you. (I went by my grandma's old house in northern Detroit a while ago -- the 7 Mile/Gratiot/Hayes area, for the natives among us -- and "reclaimed by nature" doesn't begin to describe it. I nearly wept at the sight as the memories of my brother and I playing in the back yard when we were kids surfaced.) Most in the Metro Detroit area, however, know "suburbs" as the cities and towns outside the city limits, cities such as Grosse Pointe, Royal Oak, Southfield, Dearborn, etc., all of which are alive and thriving.

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[timeOday]

Detroit is just foreshadowing what will happen to many of our cities over the next 15-20 years as our economy continues to slide into the ocean of wealth inequity.

I think, and hope, that last sentence is an overreach. Just because things are going that way in a given place doesn't mean it will eventually happen everywhere. Maybe the pendulum will swing back the other way, although it is hard to see how this worldwide oversupply of labor might be exhausted. Or at least the slide may run out of steam, finding a new equilibrium that's not ideal, but not utter collapse either. Look at Britain, no longer King of the World, but not a hellhole by any means.

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[aaarrrgggh]

A whole lot of other cities have the same problems, but it doesn't always make the headlines. Most cities are smart enough to have a back-up cell phone policy that is marginally functional (20-30% capacity on a good day). Things get worse when multiple sites are required for coverage due to topography.

Many of these sites are over 50 years old. They might have been upgraded over the years, but there are a lot of parts to be maintained-- generators, batteries, grounding, uplinks, and the radios themselves. Many are in very remote locations as well, often without year-round vehicular access.

I know of one city that had a major outage because the utility breaker tripped, the generator started and ran for two days, and eventually shut down due to fuel exhaustion. Nobody at the NOC knew that the generator was running.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yet downtown is mostly empty, except for government offices and a few private businesses. Why ARE cities

such as Grosse Pointe, Royal Oak, Southfield, Dearborn, etc.

alive and thriving ?

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[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you build a colossal public sector and a wealth transfer system that punishes productivity and rewards doing nothing. Eventually the productive members of the society decide to pack their things and you're only left with the socialist bums complaining how their shitty life is the fault of banks and corporations. Trying to force income equity is a sure way to destroy even a prosperous economy.

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[ttucker]

Except again, from TFA, the city of Detroit was paying an enormous sum of money to a reputable vendor to maintain the system. How does that coalesce with this third world, wealth inequality theory?

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[MatthiasF]

Should also be mentioned that the regular testing of the Detroit system stopped when Motorola began restructuring for the Google purchase.

So, I blame Google.

First Reader, now Detroit's EMS.

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[DigiShaman]

Globalism. This is what happens when it's cheaper to move automotive manufacturing overseas only to be compounded further by the unions squeezing out all the profits and stonewalling the change that's necessary to survive. It's one giant death spiral that was enviable. We've had ghost towns in the past, there's no reason to think we wont have them again in the future. Hell, Midland TX (currently a boomtown) might be the next one should all the fracking stop via legislation.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You have no clue what you are talking about. It's not New York but it's FAR from empty. I think the word "Detroit" resides in many people's mind as a verbal punching bag. I work as a software developer in downtown Detroit, yeah that's really "3rd world". Or how about the comment of walling it off, great! I'll be out of a job. (stopped reading these garbage comments after that one). Please, if you are just looking for something to bash: look elsewhere. The city has already taken a bashing from corruption and the automotive industry fall out. It doesn't need your worthless comments as well. Thank you, have a nice day.

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[Rockoon]

While Detroit hasnt had a Republican administration since January 1962, its still hard to conclusively blame the problems on the left.

We'll get a larger sample size soon enough.

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well someone is to blame. A contract is a contract, and it's not like Google was suffering financial problems. Indeed, even Motorola, who may have been, would at least keep contracts with ongoing revenue satisfied, even as other stuff fell by the wayside.

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[Anonymous Coward]

different Motorolas -- it split up, the part Google got is the phone making one, but the radios one is Motorola Solutions

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[Phroggy]

OK, but let's say the city said "our city is dying, everything is falling apart, but damnit at least we're gonna have good emergency services!" If that's their priority, and then this happens, it's a pretty big deal.

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[rthille]

Yeah, those firefighters never do shit. Why do I pay for them in my taxes?
We should have a system more like this: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/07/9272989-firefighters-let-home-burn-over-75-fee-again?lite

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[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh, it's all about wealth inequity. Everything is. Didn't you get the memo? It turns out that the secret to happiness in life is worrying more about other peoples' bank accounts than you do about your own.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe deer chewed through the cables or something.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about the comment of walling it off, great!

(Shrug) It's one of the only two ways to be sure the infestation doesn't escape. The other way is to take off and nuke the site from orbit. You'd probably like that even less.

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[aztracker1]

I, personally think that a big part of the problem is all the metro emergency responder systems being sold in "digital" systems.. yes, when they work, they do sound and function better than analog... unfortunately they can't be expected to be much more reliable than cell phones in the real world. All of these systems and radios should have analog fallback channels.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the police and firefighters seem to work OK here. The problem must be on your end.

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[aztracker1]

Most of the current use systems for communications are less than a decade old in most cities.. in the late 90's through mid 00's many cities were sold on the benefits of digital communications systems. The trouble with digital is they aren't really more reliable than cell phones. At worst with analog you can use morse code, which is still enough to communicate.. with digital it's all or nothing.

The biggest crime here is that none of these systems and radios have analog fallback options.

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[theshowmecanuck]

I don't know the demographics of those places, but could it be 'white flight'?

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[theskipper]

I think there are subtle differences in interpretation when discussing wealth inequity.

Wealth inequity won't ever go away and in itself isn't bad. If you work harder than your neighbor then your net worth should eventually be greater. That's the American Way (tm).

The problem is when you reach a tipping point where 1% of the population owns 30%+ of the gross net worth of a country. Because of that overwhelming wealth, it results in the owners having a huge amount of influence in the political and legal processes. Meaning they can fund lobbyists to bend lawmaking to their wishes, and they can afford the absolutely best legal representation after breaking laws (i.e. powerful enough to be above the law).

That's seems to be crux of the wealth inequity argument imho. Viewing it as some type of "jealousy" by your viewpoint, and its systemic effect on the other (the OP).

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[iggymanz]

what is this "wealth inequity", what is this "unbreakable circle". there are plenty of minorities who work hard and are able to secure a good living in this country from zero even with very poor english skills and literacy..... but not the ones in Detroit. in Detroit you have a bunch of adult babies who only can whine and suck on the government teat while family structure breaks down and criminals make the place a ghetto. It's long past time to say "oh it's discrimination" or "oh they're a poor persecuted minority", those people need to get off their dead asses and make something of themselves.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. At least in the US, the poorest among us live better than the kings of only a few centuries ago. As long as that's the case, I don't think we'll see blood in the streets.

Trying to start a class war in America has always been right up there with trying to light your BBQ grill by pissing on it.

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[FatdogHaiku]

Maybe it should be Motorola, Solutions?
Actually, I'm betting this was a failure at the local level, a couple of techs or more likely a middle manager that spreads their people too thin...

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[kilodelta]

And the other thing to remember - these are more likely APCO P25 standard trunked systems and Motorola sold those to virtually every single municipality out there. Here in our city there's the trunked radio but then there's also a MESH network for law enforcement only.

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[Anonymous Coward]

wealth inequality?

Having been overrun by niggers 40 years ago who rioted to secure it isn't a factor?

Fact is, the best correlate of crime in an area is the percentage of niggers.

West Virginia doesn't look like that, despite being the poorest region in the US. Funny that.

But yeah, blame wealth inequality and/or Democrats. Don't notice race, you saw what happened to Paula Dean.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't the "overwhelming wealth." That's always been around. The problem is a one-size-fits-all humongous government that the people (not the overwhelmingly wealthy) have demanded. Gone are the days when you can flee to Wyoming if you don't like the rules in St. Louis. Not because there isn't a tremendous amount of space and land available, but because we won't allow it. You're a polygamist? Sorry, you can't be. People in Georgia are offended by it. Oh, you don't want your state to fund abortions? Sorry, but you must because Californians say so.

Go back to the principles of earlier America, and live and let live and most of the problems that people blame the wealthy for will disappear. Or we can continue down this path and end up like Europe before WW I and II.

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[sjames]

You must have flunked recent history. The Unions and strike breaking in the '30s was very much on that trajectory until their demands were met in order to avert a full on revolution.

Or are you more in that "OMG unless you get both arms and legs hacked off with a can opener and both eyes poked out you have no right to complain at all...unless I stub my pinkie toe OUCH!!!" camp?

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[sjames]

Not really, no. The ability to make a living wage and not have the economy crashed out from under you are not going to be solved by a government that can't or won't stand up to the wealthy.

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[rtfa-troll]

Except again, from TFA, the city of Detroit was paying an enormous sum of money to a reputable vendor to maintain the system. How does that coalesce with this third world, wealth inequality theory?

Paying for things which don't get delivered is exactly how the third world manages to stay the way it is. Do you think the people there are lazy or genetically incapable or something? Basically what creates first world countries is a large group of people who are well enough paid and educated to understand what needs to be done and make sure it happens whilst at the same time not being rich enough to cut themselves off from the society and so having to care that everything gets done. These are exactly the people, in the middle, who are disappearing as wealth inequality increases.

The temptation of being paid to do something and not actually doing it is a standard thing that has been known for years. It's only when we get to the "full outsourcing" that our MBAs are so fond of that anyone would even consider getting rid of or selling off the people responsible for measuring and ensuring that the things that are paid for actually get delivered.

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[rtfa-troll]

those people need to get off their dead asses and make something of themselves.

I get the impression that many of the ones that were capable of and motivated to do that have already done so. They've all left for California and Texas years ago. When all of those people go, what are you going to do with the rest of them? Execute them? Mixed in with the fundamentally lazy and useless are a bunch of people who have honest to god mental health problems, bad luck stories and serious family problems. If you (and I'm talking to the Americans here) want to be seen as civilised you have to work out some way to deal with this. You cannot just count on an ever decreasing minority of active and effective people in Detroit to be able to deal with this. Even if it's evacuating the whole city or whatever, there has to be some overall agreed solution to deal with places that are starting to go bad.

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[girlintraining]

Globalism. This is what happens when it's cheaper to move automotive manufacturing overseas only to be compounded further by the unions

Okay. Pardon the french, but I'm gonna have to ask you to take a step back, and literally go fuck yourself. Every major industrialized country except the United States has a labor party, and strong unions. The wealth gap in every other G20 country is significantly less than here in the United States. If your argument had even the slightest rootings in reality, the story would be very different. Unions had nothing to do with this; Rapid deregulation brokered by large corporations and a cozy relationship with Congress did. Unions have exactly dick to do with this -- it's just propaganda pushed out by Fox News and rabid conservatives who think profits are people too. Unions act as an economic stabilization force -- they cool the fluxuations in unemployment, wages, etc. Even Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations said Unions were a necessary part of a capitalist economy -- and he said the same about health care and unemployment insurance. He then went on to provide examples of how the long term growth of an economy improves with such policies; But they are usually not implimented because of short term focus on profit. He also advised governments to step in and create public works projects during periods of higher unemployment, back-filling the natural boot/bust cycle of capitalism, and then increasing taxation during periods of economic prosperity as an investment into the next cycle.

As much as many conservatives think they have a handle on what capitalism really is and what's best for it, they have a remarkable lack of education on the positions of its strongest supporters. It's unfortunate, really; If they weren't so fiscally irresponsible with their short term thinking and focusing on things like reducing government spending during a recession, etc., we wouldn't be stuck in these "stagflation" situations where inflation rises but unemployment remains constant. Such an (unpredicted) economic stall-out was first observed during the Reagan administration courtesy of "trickle down" economics. Its successor has resulted in the longest period of elevated unemployment in American history. And none of this has dick to do with Unions.

It's one giant death spiral that was enviable.

The death spiral isn't actually a spiral so much as a cycle. Deregulation leads to market crashes, which lead to regulation, which lead to market crashes, which lead to deregulation... Capitalism itself is fundamentally and systemically unstable, especially in its pure form. This is why almost every major world economy is a hybrid of socialist and capitalist policy, and any divisions between the two are largely arbitrary and based more on the political beer googles of the person assigning labels than what the economy is in actuality.

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[Anonymous Coward]

WOW your name pretty much sums it up. You remain anonymous and a coward while deflecting from real issue, and defending Billionaires. The comments about third word relating to the status of our Infrastructure are a matter of public record if you would expend the effort researching this as pushing your conservative defend the Rich BS ! The American Society of Mechinical Enginerrs published a report that gives our Infrastructure a D minus. The is not liberal bias it is just a fact that unfortunately has been made into a political one because a Democratic Party POTUS wants to spend money on our Infrastructure that because of past budgeting issues has been ignored for decades. The Engineering students did not believe their teachers when they informed them of the Minn/St. Paul I-35 bridge collaspe because our Interstate Highway System built after WW2 is the "Gold Standard" that both China & India are using as their reference model. This was unthinkable to these students that was happening in the USA. The problem is wedud not spend the money to maintain them, and they only had a 50 lifespan so do the math we need to refresh a awful lot of infrastructure that is approaching End Of Lifespan or EOL in Engineering terms. The repkacement bridge has a 100 expecred lifespan. We were prospers because of the Infrastructureconstruction a Republican President signed old Dwight D. And why a Republican Congress and obviousky morons like you can't see this is because you are more concerned about tax breaks for the wealthy. The previous post about 3rd World was not about Bank Accounts you twit it was about neglecting our obligations to keep the Public Works in godd status that everyone benefits from even your wealthy overlords like the Koch Brothers. Everyone use Infrastructure inckuding the wealthy they just don't want to pay for it....

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[Anonymous Coward]

Again your stupidity shines brightly. The issues of Detriot are those of msny cities such as even Phila. Pa. The city where the American Dream was born is having issues, but that was not what the origonal story was about. A outside contractor said the system hsd not been tested in two years. Why ? Did the bean ciunter MBA outsourcer not place simething in the contracts about trsting, and make producing the test results a deliverable? Probably not since I doubt they taughtthat class at Harvard when he wss getting his MBA. I do not object to the ignorance of most MBA's ( notice I said most as I have know a few who were very intelligent but only a few) I most object to the arrogance of most that make decisions without consulting others, as any responsible technician wiukd have wanted not only seeung the test results but watching the testing. The us fundementallt a failure of government cutbacks so championed by the Tea Party Morons who claimto be Patriots while in fact doing everything they can to weaken this once great country.

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[Tailhook]

the city had a valid contract

Please allow for corruption when speculating about Detroit. This is the land of Monica Conyers and Kwame Kilpatrick. The pension fund managers have been squandering contributions on various and sundry kick-back schemes for decades. Four days ago the feds served warrants on building inspectors for selling permits. Essentially every contract let by the city is a plaything of the city council. The police go through a new corruption scandal every few years and there are multiple concurrent federal investigations of police officials ongoing right now.

At this point one may wonder if the supposed back-up systems physically exist. Discovering that the money was siphoned off by some city council member or other would surprise exactly nobody.

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[slick7]

Hey I heard you wanted a 911 system for your 911 system but it failed, so it failed.

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[DigiShaman]

You don't have a clue. Sorry, but you don't. Unions no longer serve this nation in a global economy. They did when we didn't have OSHA standards, but that's about it. It's now swung so far the other direction as to become parasitic. Unions are nothing more than a protection racket with their pimp-lords funneling money into politics.

Also, we are headed out of stagflation and into inflation just as it happened in the 1980s. It's inflation that causes a rift in wealth inequality. But idiots on both sides of the isle want to spend money we don't have. Republicans spend on defense policing the world while Democrats spend domestically on stupid-ass projects and programs that don't do anything constructive or cohesive for our own national self-interests; only theirs (the Democrat party). But what the hell, they can just print more money and push the hot potato of debt further down the line. Why not? They get first spending rights to all new wealth created thus diminishing your own savings. That's assuming you even have any. It's like a sideband form of taxation in effectiveness without actually being a "tax" in the true meaning of the word.

In theory, both "trickle down" and "trickle up" policies will work in so much as they move money. It's the momentum that drives the economic engine. Now personally, I subscribe to the "trickle down" approach. However, even I will settle for "trickle up" rather then complete gridlock. Again, so long as it's based on sound policies (which they rarely are). The problem we face is a "trickle out". This nation is hemorrhaging wealth and opportunity. That's globalism. That's what happens and will continue to happen until a certain equilibrium is reached. Normally this kind pace happens at a steady rate. As you should know, the Internet changed all that. It was a shock to America's status quo of spending, taxing, and inflation. Now we are arguably in a financial death spiral with the BRIC nations so desperate to leave the US Dollar as the worlds reserve currency.

So what's the solution? There is none. Just watch it burn. Germany and Argentina have a lot to say about hyperinflation. Just ask them!

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[RubberDogBone]

Wait wait wait. Perhaps you hear the Motorola name and think this is a vendor with a proud and respected name and a great reputation. And that's true. 30 years ago.

The Motorola Solutions of here and now is notorious among Public Safety agencies for installing crap equipments, failures like this where the failover doesn't work, system problems, interface problems, junk radios, and all the while overcharging for all of it. Even when they low-bid something, they can be counted on to deliver a solution that doesn't actually, you know, work, and then negotiate extra fees to fix it. And fix it again, and again, Because by then, the agency has already spend X+Y dollars on it so they can't throw it away and get Kenwood or Harris in there. Besides, bad things happen when Moto loses contracts. Like it drops dead suddenly and mysteriously and doesn't come back for a long time. Sabotage? No. They just quit with the zero-day hot fixes.

Chiefs of Police and Fire and other agencies know this stuff goes on but good old /\/\ has lots of lobbyists and sales weasels throwing dinner and junkets at anything that breathes and can vote for or endorse a Motorola contract. If the local Chief doesn't want to play, then they go for the city managers, the city council people, the Mayor, the dog catcher, anyone they have to. They totally act like a big defense contractor except on a local level where the local yokels have no response this sort of action except to vote for Team /\/\ every time.

So in other words, the crap that happened to Detroit is FAR from the only similar situation where the system dies. NY has had problems, San Francisco, DeKalb County GA, Denver, systems all over the place. It happens so often that it's considered normal Moto behaviour and THAT'S scary.

Where are the other vendors? They're out there bidding too. But Motorola is sort of the penis enhancement of radios where "all the BIG GUYS have Motorola so you KNOW you want to have it too, don't you?" is what the sales reps say. You know that big city you want to be like? Yeah? They have Motorola. So sign right here. No no, that's not a contract change. We just corrected a mistake for you. Just sign it.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but most of America never came out of the 3rd world (in it's current common usage) unless you were rich.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Eh?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Oh.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Nukes it is, then.

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[Anonymous Coward]

As much as many conservatives think they have a handle on what capitalism really is and what's best for it, they have a remarkable lack of education on the positions of its strongest supporters.

Whatever. My city is run by fiscal conservatives, and they aren't arguing about whether it should be nuked, flooded, evacuated, or sold to a Chinese scrap-metal dealer.

There must be something we're doing right, that you're doing wrong. Might want to look into that.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, how helpful. Exactly what city are you talking about?

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[sjames]

Considering that a Motorola spokesperson indicated that the system is under contract, that seems unlikely.

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[adolf]

Indeed. It seems like a contractual error, more than anything else: Motorola (for various incarnations of "Motorola") apparently didn't make sure that their failsafe arrangement actually would fail safe, even though they were paid in advance to do so.

(Disclaimer: I work with Motorola communications, dispatch, and radio systems in public safety use. It seems to generally be quite good gear, but it fails just like anything else. And, sometimes, testing is a logistic nightmare...but if I'm paid to do it, I (myself) get it done, just as I would ensure that the backup routine for $random_server can actually be used to restore the box to a useful state.)

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[adolf]

Where are the other vendors? They're out there bidding too.

You mean, vendors like Avtec? Whose Ethernet interfaces take a permanent shit over minor grounding issues? (Ethernet. Grounding issue. Multiple recurrent permanent failures. Turn that over in your head for a minute, and get back with me about how impossible that all must be.)

Or do you mean Orbacom/IPC/Positron, whose IO boards go to out to lunch periodically and need resetting? (The immediate response from support was "Can't you just have someone push the reset button?" and I'm all like: Yeah, sure I can. We'll just have the customer hire a four new guys to push the button in shifts.)

Perhaps you mean Telex, where things just silently stop working?

Or maybe you mean Zetron, where nobody ever needs anything better than an 8088 to get anything done? You want to take about interface issues?

Yeah, sure: Motorola stuff breaks. So does everything else.

In other news, both Dell and HP make computer systems that are simultaneously awesome and variously lousy, and even a well-serviced BMW or Toyota can leave you stranded.

*shrug*

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[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that Moto is selling ENCRYPTED radios so the pesky public cannot follow along. Which means for best results all the police in a geographic area have to play on the same team... Kind of like Windows. So now that its designed so pa is always in control, individual units can't even talk to each other... Go SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE system! At least when they had plain radios officers could communicate with somebody!

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[JBMcB]

Unions had nothing to do with this; Rapid deregulation brokered by large corporations and a cozy relationship with Congress did.

Sorry, in regards to the automotive industry, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The Japanese, German and Korean car companies ATE THEIR LUNCH in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. That's what tanked the US car companies. Know how many foreign car companies have unionized factories? ZERO. OK, Toyota had ONE - NUMMI - that was a joint venture with GM (which was the only reason it was unionized) It's closed now, and they moved production to a non-union plant.

The union can be an important and positive force in the labor market. However, the auto worker unions have gone completely bonkers over the last 50 years. A couple years ago there was a minor scandal when Chrysler fired a dozen or so line workers for drinking and smoking weed on their lunch breaks. The UAW went to bat for these losers and got them reinstated. Got that? It's the UAW's policy that you can ingest legal and illegal intoxicating substances, then go work with heavy machinery, and it's perfectly OK.

I have dozens of stories about the self-destructive behavior of the UAW if you'd like more. Here's a quickie: the UAW retreat and conference center that costs the UAW $4 million a year. Good use of dues, right?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/us-usa-autos-union-property-idUSTRE78L29Y20110922

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[Common Joe]

I sympathize with you. The house where my brother and I grew up was nearly taken by Katrina. (It was in a suburb.) My parents left that house to flee from the hurricane. I lived in another state and they came to live with us for a while before returning. About 8 months later, I returned to New Orleans for a visit and I toured the area including stepping inside the house where I grew up. Except for the grass and weeds that were a few feet high, everything felt so empty and so dead. The neighborhood looked like it was from out of an apocalyptic movie... except it felt much more eerie. There were no birds. No sounds. Dead. There are no words to describe it.

I'm sure our experiences are different, but I thought I'd throw in my story with yours so that you don't feel alone.

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[Anonymous Coward]

In a country where people can work 80+ hour weeks* and still only be barely able to support themselves and a child, I'd say unions have a long way to go. Of course, that person would be instantly fired if they tried to start one. Note that they're necessarily being paid for all of that time, because of lax regulation and no union, meaning that if they want to fix it, they have to do it individually against a massive, well-lawyered employer... and they'll probably be fired right away, which is a hell of a disincentive to fight for their rights when they have a child to feed.

In practice, trickle down has never worked. In practice, trickle up has. In insane hypercapitalist ideology, only the system that allows the wealthy to continue looting the nation and robbing the poor has value, and since they own the laws and the media... welp.

Re:Expected

[lgw]

But that's just it: the problem you cite have always been with us and are far better now than in the 1800s, and far better then than in the 1600s and so on. The 50 states used to be far more varied, with quite different ideas about how to run a state being realized. If things were intolerable in your state you could just move.

Now everything's far more homogenized. There are still significant differences to be had between the states, and you can still gain a lot by moving to some state that you thing does things better (I just did - kiss my ass California), but it's not the difference in kind that it used to be.

Detroit is a special case, though. It will die as a city, as there's no reason to have a city there any more. The age of cities as places where we all gathered around the factories (that were all build around water transport) have come and gone. That was a 100 year phase, and it has passed, and Detroit will pass with it, as it never found something new to be the center of.

Re:Expected

[sjames]

I would like to see less homogenization overall, but that doesn't require a weak federal government, just one that keeps to it's job. It really must support the rights of the people, I don't think we want slave states (for example) even in a less homogeneous system.

Re:Expected

[lgw]

There has never in all of human history been a government that "keeps to it's job". Of course, it's hard to think of one that got weaker, either. I figure we're pretty much doomed.

Re:Expected

[sjames]

Many governments in Scandinavia seem to be keeping to their job lately. The USSR got so weak it faded away.

Re:Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably a ham and/or hold a FCC GROL

We warned governments about going to digital systems. They didn't listen.

Shorter range, easier to jam, and more expensive? That's a bad combination.

Re:Expected

[iggymanz]

motivation comes from self, as for "capable" they have arms, legs, and human brains. No one is suggesting execution, but cutting abled bodied people from sponging off my dime is a great start. Pay and feed a person not to work, not have a family structure, and to breed like flies and Detroit is exactly what you'll get.

Re:Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans want to lose 2016 election on purpose. By not supporting labor unions they are giving 2016 elections to the Democrats.

Re:Expected

[riondluz]

check out the book "Detroit" by Charlie LeDuff for an up-front and personal look at the deterioration of that City. Corruption and incompetenence knows no limit.

Re:Expected

[riondluz]

"Republicans spend on defense policing the world while Democrats spend domestically on stupid-ass projects and programs that don't do anything constructive or cohesive for our own national self-interests..."

Republicans spend on defense in support of corporate, conglomerate, dominion; the same .com's that are reducing the value of our labors to 0 (if possible)
Democrats, don't get me started.

But you're such a tool reading your spew makes me want to puke.

Re:Expected

[riondluz]

you know, it's not unions, per se. Its things like pensions, health care, having a job you can actually put 20 into and retire.

That's what got too costly for the auto manufacturers. Now, they're more a bank (GMAC...financing...) than a producer of cars.

I'm not saying that unions got too corrupt and full of themselves, but if you keep supporting the corporate mantra then all labor will just become a race to the bottom.

Re:Expected

[plover]

Maybe that's why tort reform isn't happening. Everyone but the 1% gets screwed, but if it's blatantly unfair, the occasional prole can sue for a million dollars and win. It's like the promise of the lottery: "oh, look,there's hope for the little guy who sued McCorp and won." That's an affordable expense to keep discontent low.

Re:Expected

[JBMcB]

you know, it's not unions, per se. Its things like pensions, health care, having a job you can actually put 20 into and retire.

It would be great if that's all they were asking for. They also want (or wanted and got) guaranteed jobs ad infinitum, no changes in shifts, guaranteed staffing levels, unlimited free health care, and, apparently, freedom to go to work high.

Need another story? My grandma's neighbors were UAW for Chrysler. The mom would take her four kids to the ER every time they had a cold or an earache, because she didn't like waiting around at the clinic. No copays for ER visits, you see. This practice was fairly common - I know a few other families who did the same thing. When a copay for ER visits was proposed in the early 2000's (somewhere around $30) the unions went on strike.

That's what got too costly for the auto manufacturers. Now, they're more a bank (GMAC...financing...) than a producer of cars.

GM and Chrysler are mostly divested of their finance divisions.

I'm not saying that unions got too corrupt and full of themselves, but if you keep supporting the corporate mantra then all labor will just become a race to the bottom.

Re:Expected

[twimmel]

The most insightful and accurate thing I've read on Slashdot in a quite a while. Thank you.

Re:Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, in regards to the automotive industry, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The Japanese, German and Korean car companies ATE THEIR LUNCH in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. That's what tanked the US car companies. Know how many foreign car companies have unionized factories? ZERO.

Are you on crack? Clearly you (also) have no idea what you are talking about... Manufacturing workers in Germany are highly organized and have always been so. More so than Americans. If unions are the source of all evil, as your treatise seems to imply, then German companies should not be able to "eat anyone's lunch". But perhaps the world isn't quite as straightforward as Fox News tries to make it seem.

Many many articles, but this is a decent one: http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/

Re: Expected

[sabbede]

I see two options for Detroit.

1. Abandon it.

2. Find a giant corporation to take it over. If we're lucky, they'll create some sort of cyborg police officer that will solve the crime problem.

Re:Expected

[StormyWeatherL33T]

Not standing up to them doesn't really cover it. That top percent exists because our government props them up substantially and removes a lot of their personal risk. I'm all for people keeping the money they earn, but we provide a seemingly endless supply of tax breaks, subsidies and shelters for corporations, which isn't quite in the spirit of a free market.

Re: Expected

[Applekid]

Remember that Moto is selling ENCRYPTED radios so the pesky public cannot follow along. Which means for best results all the police in a geographic area have to play on the same team... Kind of like Windows. So now that its designed so pa is always in control, individual units can't even talk to each other... Go SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE system! At least when they had plain radios officers could communicate with somebody!

This is an old article and and old post, but this is a brilliant observation.

Security through obscurity doesn't work, and in this case, literal security.

Re:Expected

[rthille]

Yeah, given who I was responding to, I figured I didn't need the /sarcasm tag...

Re: Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you elaborate on Avtec? Thanks

No testing, the result is production

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you test your backups. Because if you don't, PEOPLE DIE.

Re:No testing, the result is production

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And now, the punchline: "In other words, Detroit's emergency response time increased by about 1.5%.

When seconds count, help is minutes away

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in this case, hours.

I'm sure if everyone living in Detroit "paid their fair share" of taxes, that extra money would have helped, too.

Yay, government. It's SOOO wonderful, we really have to give it more tax money.

So they can use it on reading all your emails, then hunting down Snowden et al

Re:When seconds count, help is minutes away

[Lunix Nutcase]

Except the fault was Motorola's. But don't let facts get in your way.

Re:When seconds count, help is minutes away

[wisnoskij]

Responsibility, it always slides down hill.

Re:When seconds count, help is minutes away

[OhPlz]

The city's emergency management office isn't responsible for the backup system? The city is obligated to test these things to make sure they work. Vendors don't police themselves.

Whatever happened to accountability? We're living in the age of "pass the buck".

Re:When seconds count, help is minutes away

[Anonymous Coward]

If I hire someone to manage something, and it goes to hell, I sure don't blame myself. I blame the the people I paid money to manage it for me.

What you're suggesting is passing the buck.

Re:When seconds count, help is minutes away

[OhPlz]

If I hire someone to manage something, and it goes to hell, I sure don't blame myself.

I'm sure no one in Detroit is blaming themselves either.

And...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single fuck was given...

Just wall off detroit and start emptying the prisons into it.

We spend way too much on prisons... And detroit is a lost cause.
It will take BILLIONS to turn it into anything but a shithole.
So why not just let it be a shithole... The best shithole on the planet!

Re:And...

[djdanlib]

Last time we tried that, we got Australia.

Re:And...

[Anonymous Coward]

John Carpenter and Kurt Russell are still around making movies. Dare I suggest Escape from Detroit? I dare, I dare!

Re:And...

[Anonymous Coward]

That turned out pretty well... It only took a few hundred years.

We should try it again. And put it on tv too.

Motorola fails

[Anonymous Coward]

Philadelphia has a Motorola system and this happened regularly. Turns out the main system and all backups were wired through the same relay so they all went down at once.

Cops say one thing, Motorola says another

[Anonymous Coward]

The cops say the system wasn't tested for over two years.

Motorola says the system is fully tested annually, and has follow-up checks done every month.

Huh? And what is the designed redundancy, if any?

Re:Cops say one thing, Motorola says another

[hedwards]

The backup system is what wasn't being tested, apparently, which makes sense seeing as that wasn't working when they needed to switch to it. And there seems to be little doubt about that as Motorola's spokesperson acknowledged it.

Re:Cops say one thing, Motorola says another

[Kilo Kilo]

Video from TFA said that the back up system was never tested. So, who's right?

Re:Cops say one thing, Motorola says another

[gl4ss]

well motorola obviously tested that the primary system worked.

the test was that they didn't get a call that it didn't work.

Logical backup

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the natural backup would be personal cell phones.
That worked in the later years for the X-files.

Re:Logical backup

[Anonymous Coward]

But their cell phones all have chips made by Motorola in them!

My question

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it "put public safety at risk" ?

I feel safe with or without 9-1-1.

Re: My question

[Anonymous Coward]

Ambulances, firetrucks, police for violent crimes, etc.

Re:My question

[hedwards]

I'm assuming that you're either trolling or live in the middle of nowhere.

Because this is a very serious thing indeed. Somebody breaking into your house? 911 is what you would call to get a police officer on the scene. Neighbor having a stroke? Call 911 and they should get medics on the scene ASAP.

People who feel safe in the absence of a 911 system are usually delusional, as those things, or analogous things, can happen to anybody at any age.

Re:My question

[Rockoon]

Because this is a very serious thing indeed. Somebody breaking into your house? 911

The 1911 isnt a very good home defense weapon. Shotguns are much better. The 1911 is for when you are out and about.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone breaking in... call the police.
House on fire... call the fire department.
Neighbor having a stroke... call an ambulance.

Seriously, this isn't that difficult.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1911 isnt a very good home defense weapon. Shotguns are much better. The 1911 is for when you are out and about.

I'd suggest an SBR (10-14" barrel) AR with an EOTech sight, and loaded with a good brand of 75gr defense rounds over the shotgun.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume, you're joking because weapons at home kill far more people on a yearly basis than intruders do.

Seriously, calling the police is a fucking obvious thing to do. Unless, of course, you want to be like that dumbass Pistorius that shot a loved one that he thought was an intruder.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what 911 is for. You call the number and they send out the correct combination of the above. You frequently need services from more than just one of those departments. The Fire Department is usually the first on the scene to medical emergencies, because of where they're located, but it doesn't mean that you wouldn't also want to have the ambulance and medics on the way at the same time.

Honestly, it's not that fucking hard. Dispatchers exist for a reason.

Re:My question

[LandGator]

What is -your- police dispatch backup number?
What is -your- fire dispatch backup number?
Do they go to your primary PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point), the same place your 911 calls go to?
Knowing both the Primary and Secondary PSAP ten digit inbound numbers may have been needed here.
Keeping them written down in your wallet is an exceptionally good idea.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume, you're joking because weapons at home kill far more people on a yearly basis than intruders do.

And the one study that "proved" this was complete junk science. It relied on treating in-home assaults by rival drug dealers as "homicides by family members."

Re:My question

[hedwards]

That's not one study, the CDC has reliable data that firearms are more often used for suicide than for the purposes of self defense. http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Related_Injury_Deaths_2010-a.pdf

Bottom line here is that if you gun nuts would actually admit that we don't have a violence problem in the US, we have a gun problem, we might actually make some progress towards solving things. But, when you can't address the weapon used in 2/3 of all homocides and a similar proportion of suicides without RWNJ throwing tantrums, it makes it really challenging to do anything about it.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trying to take away my rights to solve your problems.

Re:My question

[Agripa]

The chart you linked shows no such thing. It shows dead by suicide using a firearm versus death by homicide using a firearm and the later is only a fraction of self defense which the chart conveniently does not show. A majority of self defense with a firearm does not involve homicide and a majority of that does not even involve firing the weapon.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

Suicide is yet another thing that shouldn't have been counted in those studies. For one thing, you should have the right to kill yourself if you want. For another, if I want to kill myself and I can't get a gun, I'll just do it some other way.

Basically, unless you are a member of a few demographic groups I won't discuss here, your odds of dying from gun violence (or any other kind of violence) in the US are about the same as they are anywhere else.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

If 911 dispatch goes down, having the actual cell phone numbers of the emergency people in question would be more useful. Its also not that hard to find out who those people would be and what their phone numbers are. Be prepared!

Re:My question

[Rockoon]

But, when you can't address the weapon used in 2/3 of all homocides and a similar proportion of suicides without RWNJ throwing tantrums, it makes it really challenging to do anything about it.

As others have observed, you just pulled out a shit table of data that doesnt actually hold any relevance to your argument, yet you sit there trumpeting it like it does making you just another dishonest fuck.

But beyond being a dishonest fuck, you then say that shit I just quoted. If the liberals were interested in ending gun homicides they wouldnt have picked "assault weapons" as the thing they are trying to ban. Instead they would have picked hand guns, which are responsible for nearly all gun-related homicides. What any reasonable observer can take away from a combination of what the facts are and what the actions of the left are, its that the left doesnt give a flying fuck about homicides but instead wants to weaken the peoples ability to defend themselves from the government as much as possible. That is, after all, the only rational reason to select "assault weapons" as the evil device that should be verboten.

Re:My question

[LandGator]

Well, 49 states and the District of Confusion don't allow folks a reasonable, peaceable way to end their life when the Grim Reaper is closing in. Stop making end of life a misery and folks will stop shooting themselves.

Should have turned to the HAMs!

[blocsync]

I live in Florida, and when weather gets bad it can destroy critical communications equipment (including redundant systems). One thing I've seen done in the past is pushing communications through Amateur radio operators. Who (unlike the name would have you believe) are EXTREMELY professional and they tend to be able to very rapidly deploy communications equipment from the inner cities all the way out to the rural areas. Some of their equipment is capable of city and state coverage, but some of them can also establish international communication on a moments notice. This would have been a good fail-over for the lower priority calls. Just my 2 cents... http://www.arrl.org/ares has some info on the group I'm referencing.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Sneftel]

I've heard about ham radio being used for emergency communications, but would it really have been helpful here? Do police officers' radios work on ham radio frequencies, or could thousands of ham radios actually be distributed to them in short order?

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Technician]

A Motorolla trunked radio system consists of a pool of repeaters. A single repeater is placed into the control for the repeater site. On failure of the computer, all the repeaters switch over to a failover mode and become simple repeaters. All talkgroups vanish and all communications are shared by the repeater the radios have been assigned to. If properly assigned the dispatch and patrol should be all on one repeater. A second radio in the dispatch should be on another repeater along with top level "staff" communications.

Upon failure of an entire radio site due to power failure, antenna catastrophic failure, etc, then the backup site should kick in.

A poorly managed radio system will have radios assigned to repeaters at random. I have seen this, so when failover happens, teams can't talk to each other as they are not on the same repeater and other services are blended in so some patrols and some fire may be on the same repeater and some may be on another with no communication between repeaters.

This poor management happens when the person laying out the system is suddenly downsized and someone without knowledge of the plan has to add or replace radios and have no idea want the default radio assignments should be so they are assigned at random.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard about ham radio being used for emergency communications, but would it really have been helpful here? Do police officers' radios work on ham radio frequencies, or could thousands of ham radios actually be distributed to them in short order?

No. All the bigger cities have upgraded to a digital trunking system. That upgrade is mentioned in the article. If the system is out, there's no easy alternative. It's more like a cell phone network than a traditional radio system. They are sometimes encrypted as well. HAMs could broadcast on the VHF state radio frequencies, but those are very limited and the state towers worked just fine. I don't know about this state, but mine only has three commonly used state wide frequencies. That's not much for a big city, but it helped them get through.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[civiltongue]

Do police officers' radios work on ham radio frequencies, or could thousands of ham radios actually be distributed to them in short order?

No to both. They'd both be illegal. What happens is that some ham operators work at the dispatch center, while others ride in patrol cars. It worked this way very effectively when L.A.'s Valley area transmitters all went down a few decades ago. A similar arrangement occurs when a major hospital's internal telephone system crashes, which happens every so often. Ham radio support groups are equipped and drilled for these and other comm emergencies.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Mr. Freeman]

Nonsense. HAM radio operators are less relevant today than they have ever been. HAMs provided useful emergency communications two decades ago, but no longer. Nowadays, cellular providers truck out COWs (Cellular On Wheels. i.e. mobile cell sites) within hours of a disaster, or even preemptively if a disaster is expected. After a disaster, you'll see people talking on Nextels, not relaying messages through HAM operators. Sure, the red cross will accept volunteer radio operators, but only because policy dictates that they do so. They'll be told to set up useless radio stations and relay worthless information until they get bored and leave, or they're told that they're no longer needed.

If you want the truth about HAM radio involvement in emergency communications then you need to talk to HAMs that have actually attempted to participate in such activities within the last decade. Organizations like ARRL are going to talk up how important HAM radio is because that's the point of the organization. They'll tell you that some number of HAM radio operators participated during some disaster, but they won't tell you that the only traffic sent over those nets consisted of nothing more than periodic radio checks. They won't tell you that all HAM radio stations were set up in tactically unimportant locations. Half the time they're in areas which don't need a radio operator and the other half of the time they're set up next to a fully-functional radio truck which doesn't need any kind of HAM support.

In the situation submitted by the OP, HAM radio wouldn't have helped anyway. HAMs can only practically set up fixed locations, which are already served by landlines or personal cell service. A mobile solution would involve putting a HAM radio operator into every single squad car, which would be impractical for obvious reasons.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

A mobile solution would involve putting a HAM radio operator into every single squad car, which would be impractical for obvious reasons

Those fat hams wouldn't fit?

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

After a disaster, you'll see people talking on Nextels, not relaying messages through HAM operators.

Might want to check on that, there are no more "Nextels", as the iDEN network was shut down on June 30th (though there is a regional provider in the southeast (SouthernLinc) that still supports the iDEN technology). Amateur radio does not rely on the cellular/landline/satellite communications infrastructure, and in a real disaster would be available instantly to assist with emergency communication needs.

HAMs can only practically set up fixed locations, which are already served by landlines or personal cell service.

Not sure where you are getting this, however Amateur radio operators are able to operate mobile as well as fixed locations. And during a disaster, there is a real possibility that landlines and personal cell services could be disrupted. There are a number of HAM organizations that operate repeaters throughout the country that provide mobile HAMs extended communications areas. Perhaps a HAM in every squad might not be practical, however claiming that Amateur radio for emergency communications isn't relevant simply isn't true.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it's important to consider the scale and type of disaster. If there is something like what is going on in Egypt or Syria, Verizon isn't going to start rolling out mobile cell towers amid burst of gunfire and bombings. In a more "doomsday" type event, you're not going to have the support of these commercial entities, and you might not have the military on your side. Then, HAM doesn't seem quite so useless, does it?

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[blocsync]

Actually, I don't need to speak to "HAMs that have actually attempted to participate in such activities within the last decade." As I am one. I'm not sure what bad experience you've seen with what sounds to have been a poorly organized net. However, it does not describe the entire community and it definitely doesn't apply to all situations. I don't think I've ever heard an actual "radio check" on a live emergency net either. Net Control tends to get very annoyed about low priority traffic like that.

Perhaps you're speaking only of a specific area or a specific group of HAMs, but I don't believe your comments apply everywhere.

Clearly in this situation, All Police/Fire/EMS/Dispatch personnel could have used Cell Phones to fill the void, but they didn't. There's a string of failures here, not just one system failing. My suggestion wasn't to replace their coms completely with HAMs, rather to use them in an organized NET to handle the lower priority calls, due to the concern over high volume on the state radio system.

I think people underestimate the degree to which people will volunteer and assist public services when called upon. You can criticize HAMs/Red Cross/etc... all you want for their failures, I'll judge them on their successes when few others are stepping up at all.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[LandGator]

Yes. In an emergency where there's a functioning ARES/RACES system, hams are assigned to fire stations, dispatch centers and police precincts. Rarely do hams ride along because there just aren't enough hams, but they can pass messages to the dispatchers who use the fallback VHF analog radio system used for interoperability.

Mass media would publicize an alternate phone number for folks to call and hams would forward messages to the appropriate resource. It's well documented by FEMA (Craig Fuagte is a kick-ass FEMA boss, BTW) how to make this work.

911 centers fail more often than you will think (mostly due to 'backhoe fade' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backhoe#Backhoe_fade). Been there, done that, handled the traffic.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nonsense. HAM radio operators are less relevant today than they have ever been.

Never heard of a HAM radio. What is that? Does it stand for something since you capitalized all of the letters? I have my general license and several ham radios so I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about such things.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[LandGator]

> After a disaster, you'll see people talking on Nextels
Not any more. NEXTEL is off the air, for good.

> Nowadays, cellular providers truck out COWs (Cellular On Wheels. i.e. mobile cell sites) within hours of a disaster,
Would not have done a thing for this problem, as the dispatch center could not be counted on to have the cellphone numbers of every cop working for MCP, err, the city of Detroit. And, as to the 'rapid response' of the teams rolling out the COWs, well, often not so rapid.

> They'll tell you that some number of HAM radio operators participated during some disaster, but they won't tell you that the only traffic sent over those nets consisted of nothing more than periodic radio checks.
Mulefeathers! A lot of emergency and urgent traffic has been handled in multiple disasters in the Pacific NW alone in which I worked.

> They won't tell you that all HAM radio stations were set up in tactically unimportant locations.
Again, wrong, wrong, wrong. Unless the PSAPs, fire stations, police precincts and Red Cross are 'tactically unimportant'.

And, OBTW, SANS is on record strongly suggesting that telecom/network admins will need ham radios to reestablish communications in the event of major disaster (solar flare, Tungiska-sized-meteorite strike in metro area, short Eastasian dictator sets off an EMP bomp over Seattle). SANS ain't the ARRL, and is very well respected.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

> ham radio

> in detroit

niggers cannot into radio engineering

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[brainboyz]

Someone's got a giant ignorant chip on their shoulder!

As an EmComm amateur radio operator, it's pretty obvious you've got no idea what HAM does in emergencies. We've stepped in when hospital phone systems fail, we've helped get health & welfare messages out of disaster areas when infrastructure isn't working for miles (call it unimportant but family outside the disaster zone sure appreciates it), we're actively involved on a mobile ad hoc basis when volunteer groups are deployed, and our equipment works despite cell towers being overwhelmed or out of power.

Are the end-all to communication? Hell no, we prefer when the cell and radio networks stay up. But, to say amateur radio is less relevant than ever is ignorant. We're a stop-gap until infrastructure can be replaced. After many major disasters those trucks can't get in, and it may be days before the roads are clear enough to get them in. Guess who's on the radio and organizing within an hour? The HAMs.

If needed my city does, in fact, have a plan for deploying amateur radio operators with units or trucks as needed. Ideally that won't be the case, but we've trained for it. The local sheriff was actually annoyed when we weren't activated during a power outage. He wanted the extra manpower to do useful, but non-priority, situational awareness tasks like checking neighborhoods and intersections for power. Cell towers were swamped, so non-comm volunteers would've had trouble dialing home.

Are our radios of limited use while infrastructure is alive and kicking? Sure. Do we train on redundant radios during non-emergency events? Yup, and yes, it seems silly to be using a handheld when the walkie-talkie works just fine at event-sized distances. But most of the city leaders are happy to have us.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with all of the capitalizing "ham" lately? It's not an acronym.

This reminds me of all the old Apple MAC discussions you used to see. Bleh.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[RubberDogBone]

iDen is not dead. Nextel was not and is not the only iDen network in the US. There are others, both public networks like SouthernLinc, and private operations.

iDen is also still in use outside the US.

However, the replacement for it, from Motorola's perspective, is MOTOTRBO.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[adolf]

Nonsense.

In a Motorola Astro trunked radio system, a loss of connectivity puts that site ("tower") into site-trunking mode.

There are still talkgroups. Everything still works as usual. What doesn't work is communications between sites.

But people within earshot of that site can still talk amongst themselves. And units can still talk in simplex amongst eachother, in talk-around form, from radio to radio.

Stand-by backup site? That's just wasted bandwidth and infrastructure, at least in terms of how Ohio MARCS is arranged. There may be backup antennas, and back up repeaters, but whole sites? Nope.

What's -supposed to happen- is that a truck/trailer rolls out, fully equipped to handle a single site failure, and works intermediate communication from that point using humans. This keeps the otherwise-affected police policing, the ambulances ambulatory, and the fire trucks trucking.

Meanwhile, a cellphone rings, which sets of a chain of other cell phones, which introduce a slew of tired radio techs into the mix to make things work again post-haste.

But what happened in Detroit seems to have been a failure of central dispatch, not any sort of repeater malfunction. Which is a different problem entirely. (In Ohio, we have backup agencies who can handle dispatching for neighboring agencies that have centralized problems. But Detroit? I don't work on Detroit's stuff, so that's not my fault.)

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[adolf]

Indeed, cell phones work for temporary problems.

I was once tasked with hauling gasoline up 12 flights of stairs to fuel a generator for a LEO repeater that was down due to a power outage caused by a ridiculous, one-in-a-few-lifetimes flood.

Yeah, I did pretty good at getting that done -- especially with the small, efficient Honda Inverter generator we had up there at first. But when the Honda died after a couple of days, and the gasoline-hauling sessions went from about 0.75 times per day to three times a day because the only available replacement generator was both huge and thirsty, nobody was harmed when the repeater would drop because I was delayed en-route*.

Indeed: They had other (simplex) channels they could talk on, and worst-case, every LEO had a cell phone.

*: What, you think it's easy getting from dry ground out-of-town to a repeater location that is in the river valley and surrounded by water? Nevermind a working place to buy gasoline to begin with. It was hard work getting that done, and the sleep deprivation didn't help any.

**: As an unreferenced footnote, it's not that any of this matters. It seems that Detroit suffered a central dispatch failure. And in that instance, depending on the pervasiveness of that failed system, it might have been impossible to look up a cell phone number.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Detroit actually does have a backup site. Which failed to activate when the Detroit simulcast system went down. The word is that the fallback site had never been tested.

Fallback site: http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?siteId=17200

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Mr. Freeman]

You're correct. I will admit that HAM radio will probably be useful should the apocalypse occur in the near future. However, seeing as how this has literally nothing to do with the conversation, it's a moot point. Mass rebellion isn't a natural disaster nor does it fall within the perview of emergency communications.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Mr. Freeman]

It's not an acronym, but it is often used as an abbreviation for "amateur radio". For example, saying "ham operator" wouldn't make much sense. What is an "amateur operator"? Whereas "HAM operator" implies "amateur radio operator". The word "radio" is not contained with the word "ham" so capitalizing it to "HAM" can make some sense.

Webster would probably shit his pants, but you get the idea.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Mr. Freeman]

If there was enough time to set up some kind of HAM net for police use then there was enough time to set up a system that makes use of personal cell phones. If people didn't have personal cell phones then it still would have been easier and faster to get a telecom company to ship out crates of cell phones for use and distribute them to officers.

It's not just a matter of "OK, let's set up a net. All HAM operators, check in!" You have to get the radio traffic to the individual police officers somehow. How do you intend to do that in less time than it would take for another solution to accomplish the same thing?

I understand that HAMs can help with emergency communications *in theory*. I was actually very interested in learning HAM radio for some time. However, from what I've read on the internet damn near all emergency communications of any importance are already handled by professionals. There are systems in place for shipping out mobile cell cites, generators, phones and their associated batteries and chargers, etc. Those phones are also automatically prioritized on the cell networks so saturation isn't an issue. Every story I've heard about HAMs running emergency communications in the last decade has to do with either:
A) A training scenario. HAMs participating in local emergency response *simulations*. They might pass useful traffic in this scenario, but it's only for training purposes.
B) HAMs passing useless information around their nets during a real emergency. With all important traffic being taken care of by other professional solutions already in place. When an emergency worker needs to get a message to someone else in a hurry they just whip out their cell phone, their radio, or head to their own radio truck and pass it. They don't go to the HAMs. HAMs are only given the busywork messages to send, if they're given any work at all.

I literally cannot find a story about HAMs actually doing anything during a disaster in the last decade or so. Every article says "HAMs worked quickly to set up stations!" or "HAMs made themselves, and their radios, available!" or "HAMs stood at the ready!" Basically just a lot of variations of "HAMs turned on their radios and did nothing."

If you have evidence to the contrary then please tell me because I'd love to hear it.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Mr. Freeman]

If your entire argument rests on the fact that I capitalized an abbreviation that's often used to reference things other than "amateur" then you're a fucking cunt.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Mr. Freeman]

You've basically just confirmed my point. You train for things that you're never used for and never will be used for. You pass messages of low importance, and you weren't even used during a somewhat recent low-priority incident.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's your evidence: Contact the ARRL they can explain it to you.

If you cannot figure out who they are, you won't pass the exams.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... firt hit in a Google search? Just Sayin'

http://www.examiner.com/article/ham-radio-s-response-to-hurricane-sandy-is-reviewed-and-praised

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[LandGator]

Thank you for introducing fact to the argument.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[LandGator]

Multiple American Red Cross Level 4 and higher disasters.

Re:Should have turned to the HAMs!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a stupid idea pushed by ARRL to boost their members egos. No one take the idea seriously. I handful of Hams are not capable of providing communications for a large city.

Linux blows it again!

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the stability and uptime of Linux eh?

and need to build walled off rail and highway link

[Joe_Dragon]

and need to build walled off rail and highway link to Canada there as well.

Hey Detroit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get up, get, get, get down, 911 is a joke in yo town!

Scumbaggery is everywhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes that's it: "NSA style 'damage control'" - Downmod truth so no one can see it, right? You pricks around here are totally fucking pitiful, and you know it.

I hate

[Anonymous Coward]

When people talk trash about Detroit and don't live there. It's getting better and every where has their bad areas.

Re:I hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the bad area for everywhere else is Detroit.

Re:I hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. People seem to think that the only solution for Detroit is to nuke it from orbit, but in reality it would probably be OK to build retaining walls and expand Lake Erie by flooding the streets. And cheaper than nukes, to boot.

Welcome to Democrats Utopia!

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Re:Welcome to Democrats Utopia!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, in honesty, it is a good demonstration of "will of the people" run amok, driving the productive away, as taxes increase, leading to problems, and the solution is, of course, even more government.

We've seen this throughout human history in cases of dictatorship and kleptocracies. Humanity is now learning that democracy can bring on sufficient burden that the difference is little different. Nobody can make a move without kowtowing to the government for permission to do things, and when they manage, against all odds, to be successful, they are expected to heave ever-increasing percents of the success back to the government.

Economics doesn't care if it's because the government is a kleptocracy or the government is filled with well-meaning rules and regulations and temerous claims that everyone should "pay their fair share", which, curiously, is always, always increasing.

Re:Welcome to Democrats Utopia!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dat racis

Re:Welcome to Democrats Utopia!

[Anonymous Coward]

Portland, OR is doing just fine with Democrats in control of everything.

The difference is, Detroit has niggers.

Phones?

[jamesl]

How many cops carry personal cell phones on the job? Seems like giving dispatch a list of their numbers would keep things moving in such an emergency.

Re:Phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many cops carry personal cell phones on the job?

Most. Their radio conversations are recorded and subpoenable ... their personal cell phones are not recorded and thus not available to be played in court.

Before the conversion from analog radio to encrypted digital radio they usually claimed that use of personal (or department issued) cell phones was needed to protect their safety from eavesdroppers.

Don't you mean Linux fails?

[Anonymous Coward]

MOTOMESH is based on/around/upon Linux. So much for the years of "Linux is invulnerable to exploits" b.s. spread around here (1 look at ANDROID, where Linux actually gets used shows anyone otherwise), and for its "superior uptime" which the London Stock Exchange found out about not once, but twice in a row right at the start of using Linux, and you have this example now. Oh, don't worry: The little worm nerd weasels around here will just do their usual "NSA 'damage control'" (because they're little weasels and act more like women than women do) and downmod this from view (others see it anyhow so I let them have their puny illusions on that account) to attempt to hide truth as usual! Just to further their FAILED AGENDA of "the year of Linux on the desktop", which is a fail, because this article shows you how it works on servers (as well as it did for the LSE) where they are most used and most stable. Too bad they're showing they're not stable.

Re:Don't you mean Linux fails?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sober up, then post

Re:Don't you mean Linux fails?

[LandGator]

MOTOMESH is its own code and is NOT Open Source, so why are you blaming Open Source when there's a proprietary component?

Re:Don't you mean Linux fails?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a popular move that even politicians make. Blame everything around the problem except for the actual cause itself.

So 230 calls ...

[wisnoskij]

That is a lot of communications.
I understand the need to worry about overloading state infrastructure with that many calls, and why just picking up a 50 cell phone could not have fixed this problem.

Re:So 230 calls ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How well would that work, though? I won't pretend to know anything about communications systems, but using cell phones seems to lose the advantage(s) of broadcasting (i.e. - "whoever is closer this spot, take this call"). Or maybe you could broadcast text messages?

Re:So 230 calls ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has been in similar private sector situations, you got it exactly right. When the radio network is even marginally maligned, everyone takes out their cellphones, personal or not, and uses those instead. I'd wager that those communications were for broadcast only, and that is likely only because they did not have a software suite that can multicast texts- another popular option.

Detroit and Fails in a headline is not news

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us know when you can put Detroit and "success" in the headline. That's news.

Re:Detroit and Fails in a headline is not news

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have to wait for OCP to finish construction of New Detroit.

dafuq?

[MyHair]

I'm sure dispatch systems are a different animal entirely, but long ago I worked at a place with a centralized walkie-talkie repeater; it had two units and rotated which was master every 12-24 hours so the backup was always tested. It was a Motorola system.

Re:dafuq?

[gl4ss]

I'm sure dispatch systems are a different animal entirely, but long ago I worked at a place with a centralized walkie-talkie repeater; it had two units and rotated which was master every 12-24 hours so the backup was always tested. It was a Motorola system.

obviously they don't believe in dualing their systems.

you might have noticed that they have a standard policy of sending people out on their own. da fuq is that? too expensive to send in pairs or is that detrimental for collecting fees from street vendors?

Re:dafuq?

[Anonymous Coward]

you might have noticed that they have a standard policy of sending people out on their own. da fuq is that? too expensive to send in pairs or is that detrimental for collecting fees from street vendors?

It's Detroit we're talking about here. They're running low on redshirts.

Take your own advice troll

[Anonymous Coward]

MOTOMESH is Linux based. He's correct. It did fail. The article evidences it. Yes, you are a troll, since the best you have is your off topic bullshit in response to facts. Do you work for the NSA by any chance? I ask, since you "fit the profile" so well!

Re:Take your own advice troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to put Mr. Sock back in his comfy drawer and go beddy-bye.

Backup untested?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they check to see if it was stolen?

Your "spin" fails vs. truth

[Anonymous Coward]

MOTOMESH failed. It is Linux based. Facts are facts. Truth is truth. End of story.

Pot calling a kettle black ac troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Motomesh isn't on Windows. It's on Linux. It failed. You fail too. Fact. "Hey Waiter: Could I have a side order of bullshit with the spin the ad hominem attack using troll that I just replied to is slinging, please?" (lmao).

Re:Pot calling a kettle black ac troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that MOTOMESH also runs on solid-state radio equipment. You never heard of this kind of clusterfuck back in the old days, when everything used vacuum tubes.

Just saying, is all. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Why didn't the morons turn to the Hams?

[Cito]

This is a large reason why Amateur radio operators exist, they could have simply contacted the ARRL and several of the local clubs would have activated to provide emergency radio communication.

I know our town has had several training drills with us local hams, with the 911 system, We have setup a backup amateur radio station at the 911 office in case of major problems the hams show up and control the station from the 911 center acting as the nerve center. Then other hams in the club get stationed around at locations needed/required by local agencies and provide communication until problems are resolved.

This wouldn't have been a problem at all if they would have used the system that has been in place for decades the Amateur radio community, who are mandated to provide emergency radio communication.

the idiots didn't even try... or they wouldn't have had a problem this large. Their system would have went down, but the Hams repeaters, aprs, and others work just fine and even better anyhow.

Re:Why didn't the morons turn to the Hams?

[gl4ss]

it's likely the queues would have been just the same even then.

phone networks didn't go down.
now what is easier, having the phone or hauling around some dude? the problems would arise from organizing in this case, not from inability to send communications at all, but from organizing sending them to right people.

Planned $1.8 million budget cut ..

[dgharmon]

"Emergency workers told Local 4 that they're already understaffed, but come July 1, 33 more EMS positions will be eliminated. The cause of the layoffs comes from a planned $1.8 million cut to the city budget."

"Detroit's budget battle is forcing dozens of EMS workers out of a job and putting public safety at risk" June 2010

you don't understand the "world" terms

[SuperBanana]

They're no longer really part of the first world.

Sigh. Yet another person who doesn't understand what "third world", "first world", etc mean.

"Worlds" rank countries whether they're with us (NATO/democratic: 1st) vs them (non-democratic/communists, 2nd) vs undeveloped economy (3rd), no, actually.

Re: you don't understand the "world" terms

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

And there has never been an example of a word or phrase shifting in meaning as the cultural context in which it was originally used changes...

If 'spin' fails? Bad downmods up next!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux trolls can't stop truth just go to bogus downmods http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3943901&cid=44204493 as shown there as an example of their typical "modus operandi", lol! Do you work for the NSA? I wouldn't doubt it, seeing your "SOP" (std. operational procedure) is following theirs to the letter (ala "stop the presses, they're telling it how it really is by God, and we CAN'T HAVE THAT here @ the NSA", lol). No small wonder the NSA built your "SeLinux": They KNEW you idiots fell for that too, chock full of backdoors and all. Fact: Windows wasn't running MOTOMESH, Linux was. It collapsed. End of story. No "spin" possible, scumbags.

Why it could even be a PREQUEL movie :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Set in the year 1980! :-D

(The other two took place in the 90s or something, correct?)

gun control?

[fazey]

For those of you who love gun control... this is why you should own guns.

Re:gun control?

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no nooo. Let the GC advocates stay there. It's evolution where the stupid die off. It also keeps them from leaving and voting for GC in states where the 2nd amendment is revered and protected. We don't need a locus swarm where people vote for failed policies, leave, and fuck up other states that don't have said policies out of obstinate behavior. Let the brain-dead morons suffer.

Signed: A sad-but-true asshole.

You're welcome.

Re:gun control?

[Anonymous Coward]

One bullet for 'yes', two bullets for 'no', three or more for 'holy shit, I need help... oh, never mind' ;-)

The future is now...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

It's just not evenly distributed. On the plus side, Detroit would make a great game backdrop.

Re:The future is now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Detroit vs. Chinese ghost cities. Hmmm, tough call. One city echoes despair while the other is something out of the Langoliers.

Only the system going down

[thegarbz]

It was Motorola's fault that the system went down. It was the city's fault that there was an outage in emergency dispatch. It sounds very much like the backup system is way too technical and this is a major design flaw of the city.

We had our dispatch system go down in my city a few years ago, yet not a single call was missed. The city wide radio system had an abrupt outage (again Motorola at fault in our case) but the central dispatch got out the books, pens and paper, and list of backup phone numbers and started managing emergency dispatch via the telephone system and local small repeater stations.

This worked in a city of 20 million people and it was like the 45 minute outage didn't happen at all, why shouldn't this scale down to a city the size of Detroit? Also these manual systems are live tested every 3 months by different groups so everyone is fully trained in their use in a live exercise every year.

I was a 911 sysadmin...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a sysadmin on an albiet old Unixy 911 system in a city of 1.1 million people. The system was upgraded a few years before Detroits. They spent a *lot* less than 131 million. They didn't use Motorola, they used Ericsson trunking radio systems. GPS tracking went in on my watch. They had SCADA to EMS/Fire stations, traffic light control, ANI/ALI (automatic phone number/location information), Dijkstra's shortest path routing on live maps, plus nice extras (like automatic crew rotation to load balance available resources in the city, so if one end of the city was very active, response times would level out by crews moving into remote fire/ems stations). We had one instance when the system went down and people went to paper: a unix server that had been in continuous service for 10+ years and routed (all) communication traffic had a hard disk crash. 32x24pin cables had to be removed by yours truly to a training box, software moved, IP addresses changed (on this unix hardware the IP address was in the BIOS), and 2 days later a temporary shutdown by the hardware vendor to move memory from the dead box to the non-dead box. Altogether, the total outage time was about 4 hours: 3 hours initially (between midnight and 3am), and 1 hour 2 days later. Troubleshooting? They are troubleshooting days later? WTF? $131 million and they don't have hot standby that works? If the data link between our system and the phone company went down (for ANI/ALI) I would get a call within 30 seconds!

Detroit, a nice place to be from.

[Virtucon]

Burnt out houses, neighborhoods leveled with just empty lots and streets. I've worked in the area and it's hard not to be depressed sometimes.

It's being used as a dumping ground for toxic waste and if you want to see America's decline, just drive through the city. You can see homes where there's been a fire yet you see signs that people still live there. Houses with sagging roofs that look like they're ready to fall down.

The old Packard plant is still there. I visited it on one of my last trips. It's been abandoned (except for one section on the far end) since 1958 and they're still arguing how they'll clean it up. It looks like the county is finally going to auction it off, but who'd buy it? I looked at it and remembered all of those Packard V12s that powered PT boats in WWII, a lot of those engines even live on believe it or not...

There's a lot of history there and it's still a good place to visit. I especially like visiting the Henry Ford Museum and all around Detroit there's a lot of built up areas, Troy, Dearborn that seem relatively normal.

Windows certainly wasn't involved

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux was, just like The Boeing 777 crash yesterday too http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/06/2046226/boeing-777-crashes-at-san-francisco-airport Boy: Linux using companies are batting a 1000 this week, aren't they?