LaMalfa secures funding for Paradise Police Department radio system
Congressman Doug LaMalfa announced a $615,000 Community Oriented Policing Technology Grant for the Town of Paradise. This grant will be used to upgrade the radios for the Paradise Police Department.
The Camp Fire, which destroyed much of the town in November 2018, destroyed the VHF radio network connections throughout the town. Since the fire, Paradise has been operating on a combination of a transmitter, a single surviving repeater, Butte County’s Butte Regional Interoperable Communications System and one 700 MHz trunked radio network. Unfortunately, none of Paradise’s portable or mobile radios currently work on the county’s network, and the remaining VHF radios are “end of life,” meaning they are no longer supported by the manufacturer for repairs or updates. These radios will provide the foundation upon the rest of the Town’s two-way radio communications infrastructure can be rebuilt on, ultimately minimizing replacement costs and maximizing interoperability of equipment.
“Paradise is rebuilding day by day,” LaMalfa said. “Today is another small step in returning to the town to its previous level of operations. The grant I secured in Congress will help with meeting the public safety needs of anyone who lives or recreates in Paradise, which needs a fully functioning emergency system. Butte County has been fantastic in the support they have given the town since the fire, including handling all of the additional emergency services calls from Paradise. I will continue to help our devastated towns and people recover from these fire disasters.”
“We are very grateful to Congressman LaMalfa and everyone who worked on getting Paradise this grant for our Police Radio Equipment,” said Paradise Mayor Steve Crowder. “It is a critical factor of our rebuild and is an instrumental component of being able to bring our police department dispatch service’s back in house. We find ourselves frequently thanking our congressman for all his help during our recovery,”
“We are very grateful for the continued support from Congressman LaMalfa and many others. During the Camp Fire, the two-way Police radio infrastructure was severely damaged, and the current radio equipment has far exceeded its operative life expectancy,” said Paradise Police Chief Eric Reinbold. “The federal funding recently approved for our police radio replacement project is a key piece of our continued recovery efforts and will provide our police officers and staff with up-to-date radio equipment. These radios will be used for daily operations to serve the Paradise community and have the capability to allow communication when responding to mutual aid requests during disasters.”
