McHenry sheriff gets connected

This time next year, a McHenry County Sheriff's deputy could be discussing a regional emergency with a firefighter in Rockford while police officers in DeKalb and school officials in Freeport listen in, ready to help.

That should be possible thanks to a $5.1 million grant awarded this month to the Prairie Shield Regional Alliance, a consortium of about 45 law enforcement and rescue agencies spread over six counties in north central Illinois, including McHenry.

McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren announced the grant Tuesday, calling it an important starting point for a regional emergency communications system.

"One of the lessons from 9/11 is how we have to be able to communicate with each other beyond our jurisdictions in an emergency," Nygren said. "When we can communicate with all the agencies we have to in a situation, we can do a better job and we can do it more quickly."

Law enforcement groups started the alliance in 2005 to build a network that would allow them to communicate across jurisdictional and county lines during a widespread emergency.

"The goal is to eventually allow total voice, data and streaming video interoperability between all six counties," McHenry County Sheriff's Capt. David Shepherd said.

Although the $5.1 million will not stretch that far -- estimated costs for the total system hover around $12 million -- it will get inter-operable radio equipment into the hands of every participating agency beginning next year.

The funding was made available by the federal government after it sold radio frequencies for about $1 billion and then allocated that money to states to improve emergency communications. Illinois received about $36 million in all, $16 million of which went to the city of Chicago and Cook County.