Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 4, 1995 TAG: 9502060005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
Sgt. Billy Wiatt, a deputy for 14 years, repeatedly tried to contact his dispatchers using his sheriff's office radio - first to call for help, then to find out about the pursuit of Griffith's killer.
``They could not copy [hear] me calling for the bird,'' Wiatt said, using police lingo for Life-Guard-10, Roanoke Memorial Hospital's emergency medical helicopter. ```Get the bird in the air' were my exact words...''
But Wiatt's portable radio had to fight too many barriers - distance, mountains and draining power. Other deputies responding from other parts of the county also had trouble being heard.
``We had about 47 transmissions that were inaudible, and that's only a couple of miles from the sheriff's office,'' Sheriff Ken Phipps said. ``The range should have been no problem, as far as the distance.''
Although the distance from the shopping center to the sheriff's office is about two miles, the radio signal carrying Wiatt's voice had to travel much farther - to Price Mountain near Merrimac before being beamed back to dispatchers in downtown Christiansburg.
Wiatt's radio difficulties in the minutes after the shooting dramatically illustrate the long-running problem deputies have communicating with each other in the peaks-and-valleys terrain of 395-square-mile Montgomery County.
``You get a garbled transmission into dispatch, they have no idea if the [deputy] needs help or it's just general information,'' Phipps said.
He wants to remedy that problem with new portable radios that would be recharged constantly in patrol cars and with an improved signal-relay system that would make sure deputies' transmissions are heard, no matter where they are in the county.
In September, Wiatt was at Hills Shopping Center in Christiansburg backing up Griffith when the two officers pursued and struggled with a man suspected of stealing cigarettes.
Wiatt saw the man's hand come around with Griffith's weapon. The man fired the gun, sending a bullet whizzing by Wiatt's cheek, causing powder burns near his left eye and some temporary hearing loss. A second shot struck Griffith in the head, and he died several hours later in a Roanoke hospital.
Griffith's killer, Samuel Jerome Patterson, fled in Wiatt's patrol car. Wiatt tried to use his own portable radio to transmit information and call for Life-Guard-10.
``When I couldn't get through on my frequency, I pulled Terry's portable off his belt,'' Wiatt said, and talked to Christiansburg dispatchers.
``I didn't even look at Terry until the guy left. ...It was one of those things you had to do,'' Wiatt said. ``At that point ... you have no emotion. That's the hardest part. Even though he's lying on the ground shot, you've still got your job to do. You've got to put aside your personal feelings and do the rest.''
After help was on the way, Wiatt went back to using his portable radio to again try to communicate with his dispatchers and other deputies.
On a tape recording of Wiatt's transmissions that night, he sounds as if he is in the farthest reaches of the county instead of two miles from the sheriff's office.
Wiatt said he was frustrated by not knowing if dispatchers had understood that the man had escaped in Wiatt's patrol car and if they were giving that information to other law enforcement officers.
``The other deputies involved and police officers and also the state police - nobody could get a clear picture of what was taking place, and that was a real concern,'' Phipps said. ``You've lost several critical minutes of being able to determine what exactly [happened], which way he was going....''
Wiatt said he was ``flustered'' when he couldn't immediately learn whether Patterson had been taken into custody across town.
Other deputies - first responding to the Hills shooting, then minutes later on the lookout for Patterson - were equally disturbed by not being able to talk to Wiatt or make the second-by-second developments clear.
Sgt. Gary Chandler, who was off-duty, lives nearby and heard the shots. Then the pager he carries as a rescue squad member went off, alerting him to what had happened. Chandler strapped on his bullet-proof vest and drove his patrol car toward Hills. As he got closer, he could see Wiatt holding his portable radio.
``I could see him and couldn't hear him,'' Chandler said.
Patterson abandoned Wiatt's car at a nearby livestock market, forced a private citizen to give him a ride, then pushed the man out on Main Street. Patterson had driven to Phlegar Street, between Burger King and Domino's Pizza in downtown Christiansburg, when deputies caught up with him. Patterson was shot and killed - still holding Griffith's gun - after he jumped into another patrol car equipped with a shotgun and refused orders to drop the handgun and surrender.
Wiatt and other deputies can tick off a list of places in the county where portable transmissions can get garbled.
``Shawsville - just forget it,'' Wiatt said. Other hard-to-reach spots include Prices Fork Road and the area near the Sportsman Restaurant along the New River near Radford.
Given the county's mountainous terrain, trouble spots are ``so many that you can't name them all,'' Wiatt said.
Sheriff Phipps thinks a new portable radio system and three to five relay systems throughout the county would help improve communications so officers can remain in constant contact with dispatchers, especially in critical situations.
The relay stations would augment the two communications towers, on Price Mountain near Blacksburg and on Poor Mountain near Shawsville.
The current system works by sending a deputy's radio transmission - either from a car radio or a hand-held radio - to one of the towers and then to the dispatchers.
The new system would work by sending the transmission to the relay sites first. Those signals would be relayed to Price Mountain, where new equipment at that tower would decide on the strongest signal and send it to the dispatching office in Christiansburg.
The sheriff's office also is asking the county Board of Supervisors to approve money for new portable radios and charge packs that would stay in patrol cars and keep the hand-held radios at peak power.
Deputies now share 18 portable radios, returning them to a charge rack and rotating their use so they are fully charged for each shift. Sergeants such as Wiatt have their own personal portables they keep at home with a charger.
But once a radio is removed from a charger, it begins to lose power immediately.
The cost of 20 portable radios, chargers and installation is estimated at $22,900. The relay system would cost about $30,000. The combined $52,900 project is included in Phipps' 1995-96 budget request, which the Board of Supervisors will soon begin to review.
``We need really for the board to address that as soon as possible, because we don't know when we'll end up in another situation,'' Phipps said.
by CNB