Sheriff: Comm project is critical

Chickasaw County Sheriff Marty Hemann has seen it much too often.A law-enforcement officer — be it a sheriff’s deputy or a police officer from New Hampton or Nashua — will make a traffic stop, radio it in, make the walk to the vehicle and suddenly have no contact with the dispatcher back in New Hampton.“When we get to that point, that’s a major concern for me,” Hemann said, “because when you don’t have that radio coverage, that’s an officer safety issue. Something needs to be done, and not just for us as officers but for our firefighters, for our rescue people and for our ambulance people.”And the sheriff believes that the county has a good plan to move forward when it comes to its radio communications tower project. But what’s not so sure is that the Chickasaw County Board of Supervisors agree.Supervisors are meeting Tuesday morning and on the agenda is a resolution to “reconsider and rescind” a resolution that set a Sept. 17 public hearing on authorizing a loan agreement to move the project forward.“It’s something we need for public safety,” Hemann said, “and I’m not going to lie. I am worried about where we’re going with this. I will tell you right now, we do need something to change. I don’t want something tragic to happen when it could be prevented by using technology we have available.”
— For more on this story, see the Sept. 4 and Sept. 7 Tribunes