Brookfield Police Chief Aaron Kasiewicz, right, holds a wire that will be attached to the antenna Mike Cross is affixing to a temporary radio tower. The tower was put up to enhance police radio communication in Masury.
When Brookfield Local School District moved football games from Nicholas Field to a newly remodeled stadium on the school campus, it caused a radio communication problem for Brookfield police. The discontinuation of electrical service to Nicholas Field meant a radio antenna on the site no longer works.
However, Police Chief Aaron Kasiewicz and Mike Cross of Cross Radio Service, Warren, recently erected a temporary radio tower at Brookfield Fire Station 51 that has eliminated radio dead spots in the area caused by the discontinuation of Nicholas Field, Kasiewicz said.
The temporary tower, which was purchased by former Chief Dan Faustino under a federal government surplus program, is a stopgap measure until the state and Trumbull County build a Multi-Agency Radio Communications System tower along Route 7 south of Route 82. Brookfield police will switch from an analog UHF radio signal to the digital MARCS signal at that point, Kasiewicz said.
The temporary tower sends a UHF signal to the police station, where it is transferred to a VHF signal for transmission to Trumbull County 911, Kasiewicz said.
The tower was put up on Sept. 8, and Kasiewicz reported on Sept. 9 that it was working properly.
“As of right now, all of our trouble spots that we have in lower Masury have been depleted,” Kasiewicz told the trustees. “We were able to get out on portable (radios) in zones we weren’t able to get out in before. That should get us by until the MARCS tower is up and we switch over radios.”
Cross recommended the temporary tower stay up after the switch over to MARCS for use in case of service disruptions with the MARCS system.
“MARCS isn’t infallible,” Cross said. “Nothing is.”
The temporary tower does not serve Brookfield Fire, which already uses MARCS radios.
