Rest of Story

When the 800MHz system was up and running my partner, Paul Manthei and I noticed some problems with communications in and around Jackson. Troopers found difficulties at times in checking out at the court house in down town Jackson, troops would have problems when traveling east and west on I-94. Sometimes loss of communications and many holes in the digital audio. Many concerns came from troops and the Post Commander of which many passed them up the ranks to their commanding officers.

My partner Paul and I discussed the problem several times and reported these findings to our communications people. Looking the system over I came up with what I was sure was the problem. Jackson County was covered primarily by two tower sites, one near Munith, MI in the north east part of the county and the other near Albion, MI on the the west side of the county. If one looks at a terrain map you will find Jackson in the middle of the county where everything slopes downhill in all directions. The City of Jackson is built next to the Grand River which is fundamentally in a hole. Neither tower site had a line of site to downtown due to the ridges surrounding the city.

Patrol cars when going west would be closer to Munith but obscured to the site as they moved towards Albion a tower at a much greater distance. Same problem happened going in the other direction as there is a large hill between Albion and Jackson. This problem continued and the Jackson Post commander and I complained at length to the higher ups.

My partner and I were moved to Lansing as the 4th district was absorbed into the first. Some time after, while on a routine maintenance call to Jackson, the Post Commander called me into his office and closed the door. He then pulled out a correspondence from a Captain that proceeded to state that there was no problem with the radio system at Jackson and the only problem was the radio Tech. Needless to say the LT. and I were shocked they came up with this attitude and statement.

Things continued and I also found out that the Correction Officers who used HTs all around the Michigan State Prison at Jackson would not use them on the system and had to use them direct to communicate. I took my retirement in 2002 and it was no longer my concern.

Two years after I retired site 1704 was built at an existing tower that belonged originally to the DNR, a 300 footer on a hill just northeast of Jackson. Since then I have had contact with troopers and prison personnel who say the problem is gone.

To this date I have never received an apology or letter about the addition of the site, my assumption is I never will and I will always have this bad memory. This is also a reason that officers that have no radio knowledge should not be in charge of a radio communications system.