Thanks to a $1.5 million upgrade to Gallatin County’s emergency radio system, law enforcement and emergency responders can communicate inside buildings that were once considered “dead zones.”
Marjean Penny, Gallatin County radio communications manager, said those dead zones were places like Bozeman schools, the Law and Justice Center’s locker room and areas on Montana State University’s campus. Penny said Bozeman’s police and fire departments have been testing the new system for about a year and it has been performing as expected.
The overhaul is the first in three phases. The first phase, which Penny said the county is finishing, is new radios and switching frequencies from very high frequency (VHF) to an 800 MHz frequency.