
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 7, 1995                   TAG: 9502090025
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MONTGOMERY

IN AN ERA when astronauts talk to us from outer space, and we can watch and hear scud missiles finding their targets in a war half a planet away, it seems unbelievable that law enforcement in a Virginia county could be stymied by deputy sheriffs' inability to communicate with each other across a distance of a relatively few miles.

But that's the situation in Montgomery County, where a combination of deficient equipment and mountainous terrain leaves the deputies and thousands of county residents unnecessarily vulnerable to threats of lawbreaking and dire emergencies.

Obviously, not much can be done about the mountains and valleys around which the deputies' radio communications have to bounce. But the county's Board of Supervisors can, and should, approve Sheriff Ken Phipps' request for an updated radio system to overcome the terrain's natural barriers.

The current system's inadequacy came critically into play this past September, when one deputy was fatally shot at a shopping center, and his partner's calls for help via portable radio could not be clearly heard by dispatchers two miles away. The radio's power was insufficient to beam his messages along a relay system (which included a transmitting tower on Price Mountain) before they arrived at the sheriff's office in downtown Christiansburg.

All told, on the day of the shopping-center shooting, 47 transmissions from other deputies in other parts of the county also were inaudible at the sheriff's headquarters. And this was not the first time the law-enforcement agency has experienced garbled word of mouth and communications breakdowns.

Sheriff Phipps' $52,900 request for an improved radio-signal relay system, and for new portable radios that would be constantly recharged in deputies' patrol cars, is reasonable. Like other urbanizing counties, Montgomery is increasingly seeing urban-like crime patterns. Its law-enforcement officers need to be able to rely on more than luck to communicate.

The deputies and law-abiding county residents who may need help deserve at least the security of knowing that distress calls aren't dissolving into air like smoke signals.

Memo: ***CORRECTION***

by CNB