Do police radios work properly inside your child’s school? NRH police chief says districts should be checking

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, Texas — “I read you loud and clear. ” That phrase was heard multiple times inside Richland High School Tuesday afternoon. North Richland Hills Police Chief Jimmy Perdue, the city’s fire marshal and another officer patrolled the hallways radioing dispatch every now and then to ensure a signal could get out clearly.

The reason is simple: Perdue wants to ensure officers can communicate effectively during an emergency or active shooter situation. Perdue hopes to avoid a lack of communication and coordination, as seen during the Uvalde school shooting as officers arrived. “Something as simple as ‘can you hear me?’ now becomes so much more critical whenever you’re in the middle of an incident,” Perdue said.

The police response on the day a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde has been heavily criticized. After starting a killing spree that resulted in 19 children and two teachers dead, arriving officers struggled to communicate, coordinate and understand who was in charge. The district’s police chief during the incident, Pete Arredondo, is now suspended and recommended for termination.

Recently released body camera footage shows arriving agencies asking who is in charge and who is communicating orders. Multiple reports say officers had issues with their radios working correctly inside the elementary school. According to the Texas House committee’s investigative report into the incident, an officer said over a police radio, “[I]t is critical for everybody to let PD take point on this.

” Still, none of the law enforcement officers that the House investigators interviewed “indicated any knowledge of this communication or what it meant by ‘PD’ taking ‘point on this,’” the report reads. Arredondo didn’t bring his radio during the response. In an interview with The Texas Tribune , Arredondo said he had previous experience with radios not working in some school buildings, which factored into his decision to leave his behind.

He also thought it would get in the way as he ran into the school. The report also listed how an effective incident commander outside the school might have helped by noticing that radios weren’t working well and finding a better way to communicate. Perdue traveled to Uvalde to assist departments in the aftermath.

He’s also the president of the Texas Police Chiefs Association. “We saw an issue with the radios occurring in Uvalde where officers were having struggles to communicate out and with each other,” Perdue said. The City of North Richland Hills operates under the recommendations of the International Fire Code.

Those recommendations say an annual test of police radios within high-risk targets like schools, hospitals, hotels, police or fire stations should be done to ensure first responders can communicate effectively during an emergency. The police department and fire marshal run those checks two times a year to be safe. The fire marshal and an officer do checks with a dispatcher in a grid pattern throughout the school.

The goal is 95% radio coverage, which isn’t always easy to achieve. Perdue said there are a lot of dead zones within schools where it’s challenging to get a radio signal out due to the amount of cinder block and construction materials used. If a signal is weak, the department can ask Birdville ISD to install a distributed antenna system that helps boost the signal.

It’s happened before, and one was installed inside a middle school when coverage wasn’t good. “If you don’t have these tests done, the implications can be very devastating,” Perdue said. Perdue said as president of the Texas Police Chiefs Association, more department heads are telling him they’re talking security more than before with their local school districts.

If they aren’t checking their radios, Perdue said they should as school gets ready to begin soon. .