WOODSTOCK, Vt. (WCAX) – The Windsor County Sheriff’s Department is getting more than a million dollars in federal funds to improve police communication across the region.
Senator Peter Welch helped secure the money, which will be used to upgrade and modernize the department’s emergency communication radio network. The new equipment is meant to help deputies better communicate in dead zones and allow them to talk to other departments.
“Inter-agency operability. This goes all the way back to 9/11 — that we need to have inter-agency operability. We didn’t really have that before, certainly not well, and now we are going to be able to talk to anyone in the state. And this will vastly improve our abilities to communicate in our own county,” said Windsor County Sheriff Sheriff Ryan Palmer
In addition to the new radios, the county plans to use the money to install two or three signal repeaters across the region. They aim to have the new system operational by this winter.