Florida's Seminole Tribe to Gain Interoperability With the Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System

By: Jim McKay on February 23, 2010

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The Seminole tribe consists of six reservations in six different Florida counties stretching from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa — all of those reservations are serviced by one police department and one fire department.

For the six reservations, communicating during a potential disaster to fire or police and with neighboring reservations or counties meant getting on the phone. That will change this summer when the tribe joins the Florida Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System (SLERS), a 700/800 MHz, single, all digital radio network that covers 60,000 square miles of the state.

"For us to try to communicate or to have our own system to be able to communicate between reservations was impossible other than by phone," said Jerry Wheeler, chief public safety officer for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. "Now once we get into the SLERS system we will actually be set up such that we can actually communicate between reservations if necessary."

Joining SLERS will also enable the reservations to communicate more easily with the Florida Highway Patrol, the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies that may require contact with the tribe.

"It's different for us depending on which reservation we're taking about," Wheeler said. "In Hollywood we're surrounded by a metro area and we have to interact with these communities on a daily basis. Our Big Cypress reservation is the other extreme, where it's 35 miles to the nearest town and 65 miles to the nearest metro area. But the communication has to be there, and we realize we have to do this in order to adequately protect the residents on the reservations."

SLERS will replace a UHS-based communications system that is pieces and parts from different vendors and different repair facilities that have worked on the technology over the last 20 years.

More than 530 new subscribers will join the new system, which is operated by Harris Corp.

The tribe will pay a user fee of $9 per every radio linked to the network.

"Given the widespread geographic area where we have the reservations, it's extremely cost-effective for us to join an already established radio platform that covers that area," said Bob Tarrant, the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s director of emergency management. "Even though we will pay user fees, we would never be able to recoup in savings the amount of investment we'd have to make to replicate this type of coverage."

Tribes can sometimes be isolated from state and local emergency management officials, but the Seminole tribe is very much in the loop, according to Wheeler. "Tribes are unique and all have different idiosyncrasies on their willingness to cooperate with state and local officials," he said. "As sovereign nations, there are many that believe their only intergovernmental relationship is with the federal government. We're a bit different here in that we act with outside agencies as if we're a municipality like any of them. It's really the only way for us to work."

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