The state commission investigating the Parkland school shooting denounced Hollywood and Broward County officials Tuesday for delaying the upgrade of the emergency radio system that failed the day of the massacre.
During the massive law enforcement response to the 2018 shooting, police radios froze, forcing some officers — including the captain in command — to use hand signals or speak only face-to-face. Officers encountered the same problem a year earlier during the mass-shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport.
Broward County commissioners two years ago approved $59.5 million to replace the antiquated communications system, a project that would involve the construction of seven new radio towers. But the plan has run into an obstacle in Hollywood, where city commissioners didn’t want a 325-foot radio tower in West Lake Park, a position that was ridiculed by members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission.
“It’s absolutely unacceptable, period,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, a member of the commission, at its meeting at the BB&T Center in Sunrise. “What Hollywood’s saying is — hey, whatever our excuse is, it’s more valid than the lives of everyone in Broward County that’s going to ultimately depend on that system for an emergency response.”
Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy said in an email that the city took its responsibility seriously and had already agreed to the placement of one of two planned radio towers. But the park is deed-restricted as a nature preserve, he said, and “residents implored upon us to find an alternative.”
The city prefers a site at the top of a new downtown apartment tower, and city and county officials are evaluating both sites to see which would be better, he said.
According to a presentation Tuesday by one of the Stoneman Douglas commission’s investigators, the apartment tower site would be more costly and take longer to implement.
“As Broward’s third largest city, we understand the responsibility to do our part in the siting of the county’s new first responder radio system,” Levy said.
But there appears to be movement at the county end. A majority of Broward County commissioners indicated Tuesday they were no longer interested in switching the location to the apartment building.
“You’re going to watch things move very quickly as far as I’m concerned,” Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen said. “If there’s a delay, it will only jeopardize the safety of our community, so I am going to be pushing aggressively forward for everyone’s safety.”
Because of park convenants, placing the tower there will require the approval of eight of the county’s nine commissioners.
Commissioner Michael Udine, alluding to discussions of the Stoneman Douglas commission, told county commissioners there’s no time left in trying to come up with a different alternative.
“All of us are complicit in dragging this out,” Udine said. “We need to get on the same page and we need to get this done and get this done immediately.”
Beyond the technology, however, there appeared to be excessive bureaucracy, organizational complexity and distrust among the many stakeholders in the emergency radio system, with cities, the county, law enforcement and fire agencies butting heads over how the system should be run, according to a presentation to the commission.
“I’m lost between commissions and committee and advisory councils,” said Ryan Petty, a member of the commission, whose 14-year-old daughter Alaina was killed in the shooting. “I have no idea who’s in charge of this.”
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the commission, said he was concerned the system couldn’t be fixed with the “current players and the relationships and the lack of relationships and finger pointing.”
“They need to get this fixed because if they keep going the way they are nothing is changing,” he said. “And the ones at risk, the ones that are suffering, are the users of the system, and that’s the police officers and deputy sheriffs and dispatchers, and really the public that’s relying on effective communications systems to get them help.”
Staff writer Larry Barszewski contributed to this report.
dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com, 954-356-4535