Puget Sound VA security, police officer safety, compromised by radio problems, documents show

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/07/26/3303341/puget-sound-va-security-police.html?sp=/99/289/&ihp=1



TIM PLOURD VA OFFICER Tim Plourd, a police officer with the Department of Veterans Affairs, standing on the city sidewalk outside the Veterans Medical Center on Beacon Hill in Seattle.

Puget Sound VA security, police officer safety, compromised by radio problems, documents show
By Adam Ashton and Hal Bernton
Staff writer The Seattle TimesJ
uly 26, 2014 Updated 10 hours ago

The agitated radio call came in to Department of Veterans Affairs police officer Tim Plourd from a colleague who was being assaulted by a patient in the VA’s Seattle hospital.

The transmission was broken and choppy, as if the officer under attack were many miles away instead of in another part of the same building.

“I kept asking him, over and over again, ‘where are you?’ ” Plourd recalled.

~snip~

Five years later, the weak radio communications network still plagues a Puget Sound-area VA police force responsible for protecting thousands of patients and staff at the Seattle and Lakewood campuses.