Nov 11, 2008 1:18 PM, By Glenn Bischoff

Harlin McEwen, who chairs the IACP’s communications and technology committee and who led yesterday’s educational session, said the organization is strongly opposed to the stance taken by New York and the other major cities to abandon the proposed nationwide network in favor of building their own. “If we were to follow what New York City is advocating, smaller agencies would be ignored and abandoned,” he said.

McEwen, who also is the chairman of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST)—the designated licensee for the 10 MHz of public-safety airwaves that would be used for the network—said the proposed nationwide network is the best way to achieve interoperable communications and that New York City’s approach represents old thinking.

“We’ve been trying to do that [patching together disparate systems] for 30 years and it hasn’t worked,” McEwen said. “That’s why the FCC has proposed a new model, and we [the IACP] support that.”

McEwen said the idea of New York building its own network is unrealistic. “The bottom line is that New York City has no money,” McEwen said. “Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg recently pulled the plug on a recruitment class of 1000 officers because the city has no money to pay them.”

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