APCO says what many in public safety believe, calling story about FirstNet ‘inaccurate’ and ‘inflammatory’

But at least the $47 million figure is correct—it is cited in a government report on FirstNet. However, other parts of the story are so problematic that the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Executive Director and CEO Derek Poarch to take a break from his busy schedule—APCO’s big annual show begins this weekend—and took the unsual step of issuing the following statement:

“APCO does not usually react to hyperbolic and inaccurate pieces of media that are clearly aimed at inciting a response, as opposed to educating readers or contributing to legitimate discourse,” according to Poarch’s statement. “However, in the case of the article entitled ‘The $47 Billion Network That’s Already Obsolete’ appearing in the September 2016 issue of The Atlantic by Steven Brill, we must come to the defense of FirstNet’s high-quality and devoted leadership and staff, and all of the thousands in the public safety community that have worked so hard to support FirstNet.

“As the world’s largest association of public safety communications professionals, we take issue with Mr. Brill’s inflammatory claims. Mr. Brill and The Atlantic are at best misinformed about public-safety communications matters. They have done a disservice to the citizens of our country, our brave first responders, and public-safety communications professionals across the country by publishing an article that is more about attention-gathering than fact-based journalism. The truth is that FirstNet has made enormous strides undertaking a project unique in the world and of the highest importance to public safety and emergency response.”

Without quoting any public-safety officials, the article makes a series of eyebrow-raising claims, including this one about interoperability: “New York, Los Angeles, and other large jurisdictions have long since established protocols and bought technology that solve the problem.”

Public-safety interoperability has been solved? Gee, I must have missed the celebratory parades. Maybe someone will tell me about them during the APCO show. The advances in interoperability solutions have been tremendous during the past several years, but I believe most would still characterize it as a work in progress.

The story also cites the fact that cellular push-to-talk exists, but it does not note that existing vendor applications are not interoperable with one another and that none of them work in direct mode when the network is unavailable—a critical capability for first responders, who must communicate in areas when a disaster has wiped out communications networks.

“[Brill] doesn’t understand public-safety communications. He just doesn’t get it,” Jeff Cohen, APCO’s chief counsel and director of government relations, said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “I hope he’s not in a future disaster where he’d have experience firsthand responding agencies unable to talk with each other.”