NICE News Special Edition - Volume 2, Issue 5

	UPDATE FROM JIM PARK NICE PERFORM^TM SELECTED FOR FAA REGISTER FOR INSIGHT 2006 @ APCO REAPING THE BENEFITS OF REDUNDANT RECORDING TELECOMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR: SHERRY WOOD CAMERON COUNTY NICE IP VIDEO SURVEILLANCE AWARD NICE CORPORATE NEWS NICE EVENTS




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CAMERON COUNTY SELECTS NICE TO CAPTURE COUNTY-WIDE EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

NICE Systems is providing Cameron County, Texas - one of the fastest growing areas in the United States - with an integrated solution for capturing and analyzing County-wide emergency communications. Cameron County purchased the NICE solution as part of a multi-phase initiative to improve interoperability among the various jurisdictions within the 905 square mile County, which encompasses forty-nine cities and towns, including the communities of Brownsville, Harlingen, La Feria, Port Isabel, San Benito, and South Padre Island.

The first phase of the project, which involved implementing a County-wide Motorola SmartZone^® 800 MHz trunked radio system, was completed in January 2005. The County will employ NICE's state-of-the-art high-density NiceLog^® recording platform to capture County-wide radio transmissions and trunked radio data from the SmartZone system. NiceCall^® Focus III will be used at select PSAPs to record dispatch positions. Secure access to recordings across sites will be made possible through T1 connectivity and through the advanced security features of the NICE systems.

Through seamless integration with the Motorola radio system, the NICE recording solutions equipped with Scenario Replay^TM will give the County better tools for capturing, reconstructing and analyzing incidents involving a multi-jurisdictional response. "Our cities border each other; they're so close together, that if there's a pursuit from one jurisdiction to the next, we have to switch towers," said Tom Hushen, chief emergency officer for Cameron County. "With our new NICE system, we'll be able to capture and reconstruct all of those communications." Hushen also expects that this approach to recording trunked radio communications will offer improved liability protection for the County and its police officers by ensuring that all dispatch and radio communications are centrally captured and accessible.

Cameron County, located at the Southern-most tip of Texas and bordered on the east by the Gulf of Mexico, is in a high-risk area for hurricanes. When such catastrophic events occur, Hushen says, the ability to coordinate emergency response and later evaluate and learn from what happened is also essential. "If there's a hurricane and an order to evacuate, our different cities and agencies need to work together," he explained. "Now, because we're all on the same radio system and we're capturing all of those communications, we'll be better able to coordinate, evaluate and improve our emergency response."

The next phase of Cameron County's ambitious plan for enhanced interoperability will involve centralizing dispatching operations for the County. Currently, 9-1-1 calls for the County can come into any one of nine communication centers, depending on the location of the caller. Hushen says that the County hopes to consolidate those operations into four locations within the next year. "Our ultimate goal is centralized dispatch for the whole County," he said. "Eventually we'll tie all of our systems together and have a centralized dispatch point. When that happens, we'll also have the capability and capacity to record all of these communications with the NICE system we've purchased."

Learn more about Cameron County, Texas at www.co.cameron.tx.us

Learn more about NICE Systems' solutions for public safety at www.nice.com/solutions/public/first_responder.php