Breaking Static: The Evolution of First Responder Communication

What was it like before Michigan built a unified communication system for its first responders? In this episode, we take a step back in time to explore the challenges emergency personnel faced when every agency had its own radio system—and none of them talked to each other. Join Tim Lee, Deputy Director at Michigan Public Safety Communications System (MPSCS) and former Michigan State Police trooper, as he sits down with retired MSP Lieutenant Joseph Thomas. Together, they discuss the chaos of early emergency communication, when officers juggled CB radios, county, state, and local systems, and even scanners—just to coordinate a response. Don’t miss this look into how far Michigan has come in building a modern, interoperable system to keep communities safe. Transcript: http://cms.michigan.gov/mpscs/-/media/Project/Websites/MPSCS/Social_Media/Transcripts/Joe-Thomas-Tim-Lee-Podcast-Transcript--073025.pdf

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Hello, and welcome to Tune In with MPSCS. I'm Tim Lee, Deputy Director and Manager of the IT and Network Operations for the Michigan Public Safety Communications System, also known as MPSCS. We are celebrating the 30th anniversary of MPSCS, and I'm excited to welcome a very special guest, someone who's experienced the early days of the statewide radio communications transition going from regular analog over to digital. And today we are with uh retired First Lieutenant Joe Thomas. He's former post commander of the MSP Lansing Post and has been in internal affairs, the ES team, emergency support team, has been a trooper on many different posts. I don't know all of those posts, but obviously we're gonna talk about all that today. So uh Lieutenant uh Thomas served with Michigan State Police from which year? When did you start?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

I became a trooper in 1987 and I retired in 2018.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

And you were state, what was the first post that you were stationed at?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

My first post was Flat Rock, Michigan, downriver, uh just south of Detroit. I served at Flat Rock for the first eight years, and then I came to Lansing and worked in recruiting as a trooper and did a short stint at training division as a trooper at that time. Uh from there I went back out to the field, went to the Lansing Post as a trooper, served there for a short period of time, then got promoted back to headquarters as a sergeant. Uh worked as a sergeant in traffic services and then worked at district as a traffic services sergeant. Got promoted back to headquarters as a lieutenant in internal affairs. Uh, served in internal affairs for three years, and we discussed that. It was three very very valuable years with the agency. Um, from internal affairs, I went to Flint Post as an assistant post commander, then Lansing Post as an assistant post commander because that brought me back home because I've maintained my home here in the Lansing area since 1995. Um came back to headquarters and worked in operations for a number of years, and then got promoted as a detective first lieutenant in charge of the MIOC. Uh, ran the Intel Center for a year and then went out to Jackson Post as a post as a post commander, served there for a year, and then the Lansing Post opened up as a post commander's position. So then I finished my last four years at the Lansing Post as a post commander and retired.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Wow. That's quite quite a few. And now in between there, yes, you were actually assigned, you were on the emergency support team.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Yep, became a member of the emergency support team uh in 1996. I came on the team as a trooper, and within a five-year period, I went from being a trooper to being a lieutenant, and that's when I got the promotion in internal affairs. And at that point, um, my job as an internal affairs lieutenant was a little bit more busy or cumbersome that I didn't have time to be out during the middle of the night on the ES team, so then I gave up being on the ES team. So I served a short period on the team, but it was a very uh educational period on the team as well.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

And served a lot of different people on the team, that's for sure. Absolutely. Um, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Uh, I know you mentioned where you live in East Lansing already, but you uh you've got family and how many kids?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Um born and raised in the city of Detroit, um, attended school at Detroit Catholic Central, then on to college at Wayne State University, then after Wayne State University is when I joined the state police. Number of relatives worked for the Detroit Police Department, and that's where I developed the interest in law enforcement. I had uh relatives that worked in narcotics, uh, some relatives worked in specialty units, traffic units, and things like that. So it was always kind of in the back of my mind, uh, this law enforcement uh career. Um, so after Wayne State University, I decided at that time I would become a state trooper because I wanted to kind of broaden my horizons. I didn't want to be locked into the city of Detroit. I wanted to be able to get around a little bit more, not really wanting to be a federal agent, possibly. So I thought the state police was a good fit for me. Um, shortly after I joined the state police, I actually met my wife a year after joining the state police, so she got to spend the entire career with me. Um so uh met my wife a year after state police. Uh we were married in '94. Uh, once we moved to Lansing, um, we got established here in the Lansing area with new careers for her and things like that. Kids came along, the houses. So we have two children. Um, our children are now 26 and 24 years old. Um, daughter's a doctor of physical therapy, now lives in North Carolina, and our son is completing his second year of med school at the University of Michigan.

SPEAKER_03 4:42

Crazy. And not just houses, you also own other things too.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yes, yes. I have a hobby. I have a hobby that involves uh automobiles, um being born and raised in Detroit. My father worked for the Chrysler Corporation, and uh with that, cars were always very important to our livelihood, things like that. So I have a little bit, I won't call it extensive, but I have uh a car a car hobby, and I have uh a few vehicles. We'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Okay, we'll leave it at that. I guess that's that's fine. Um one thing I didn't ask you is which MSP recruit school did you uh graduate from?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

I'm out of the 101st Trooper Recruit School. Uh we came in in February of 87 and graduated in June of 87.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

How many uh started the recruit school?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

There were 106 of us that started the recruit school and 88 graduated. Wow. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Yeah. It's crazy to think back to that time.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

It it goes by fast. You would think in a 31-year career it would be long and arduous, but you know, I I look back on it now and it went by extremely fast. And then when I could have taken the natural retirement in 2012 and I went into the drop program and didn't go until 2018, those last six years just flew by. You know, yeah. It was but it was a really good time.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Well, I mean, when you were bouncing down from Mayak to Jackson to Lansing, sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

Uh, right now we're gonna take a little break and then we'll come back and we'll chat about basically the shift uh that went on in radio there from going from the regular radio communications to the 800 megahertz. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

If a natural disaster comes in, how prepared is your family? You can't just close the door on an earthquake, floods, or hurricanes, and how they go away.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

Uh welcome back to our podcast. Uh with us, we have former Michigan State Police uh First Lieutenant Joe Thomas. Welcome back.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Hey, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Uh you and I were both around uh when the state made that investment in the radio infrastructure and went over to the 800 megahertz system for MPSCS. Uh for me at the and we talked a little bit about this before the interview, but uh for me at the Adrian Post, I had a state radio, a county radio, a city radio for Adrian City. Right. And then we also had usually carry around CV radios as well. Yes. You remember those kind of times?

SPEAKER_02 7:58

I remember that, and I remember going through my my training phase, and once I got into the patrol car, it seemed overwhelming how much communication was coming into that car. Like you said, you had the state radio, you had a county radio, and at Flat Rock, we worked at that time Wayne County and Monroe County. And so I can't remember exactly if we had a Wayne County radio, but I remembered having the state radio, the Monroe County radio. Um, we would listen to a uh a scanner, and then oftentimes, uh depending on who you were working with, you would have a CV radio in the car. So you've got several different types of audio equipment that's popping off at any given time, but you quickly learn, your ear learns which one that radio was, and you tune into it if that was very important to listen to, whether it was a dispatch call or something like that. So, but it was a lot of communication going on.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

It it was definitely, and I remember that too, being a young troop, it was really difficult. I didn't think that that would be as big of a challenge as it was until you sit in that car and then you're by yourself and you don't have anybody sitting in the car with you telling you, like uh, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Did you hear that?

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Yes, exactly. Yes, your senior officer stank. Did you hear that? Did you hear what the county said? And you're like, no, I wasn't paying attention to that. I was listening to the state radio.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

So yeah, that was a challenge.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

So, and I'm sure when you were uh stationed down there at Flat Rock, did you also get to train troopers too? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

I was uh I had become a uh a senior officer, was what we called them at the time. I had become a senior officer probably I remember being a senior officer for two classes after me. So I'd be I'd become a training officer within the first year of being a trooper down there because Flat Rock was one of those posts. At the time, Flat Rock was being turned around from a disciplinary post to becoming a training post. And because we had Wayne County and Monroe County, you could do traffic in Wayne County with I-75, 275, and 94, or you could be a complaint car working in Monroe County where we were dispatched from the county. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Different world, but it was uh it had become it had become a good training site. And I enjoyed, like I said, I enjoyed my eight years down there. Uh work with a lot of good troops, and there are a lot of uh good memories from being a new trooper down there.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

Now it was it when you were stationed at the Flat Rock Post, was that when the big uh when when the big uh I'm trying to remember correctly. Flight 255. Yes, exactly. I was gonna say very much so. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Very much so. Um there are still days today that uh I have a hard time driving through the intersection of Middle Belt Road 994. Wow. Yes. So I remember that, I remember that incident very, very well.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

And that and that was the the crash of it was uh 747?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

7747. There was one surviving child. It was a I I believe she was two years old or something like that. She was an infant at the time, but she was the only survivor. But what a mess of a crash site that was.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Unbelievable. Yes. So uh one thing in talking about the county and the city and the state radios, anytime you had to call for backup.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Yes. Um, anytime you you had to call for backup, sometimes it was a scramble because you may not have been able to get out on the state radio to let our state dispatcher know that we needed backup. So then you jumped to the county radio and and you may not have been working in that county, but you knew that maybe the county radio was working, and if they could get some communication to you and get some help to you, you really didn't care what radio was working, you just needed the assistance at the time. So it was a it was a game that we played sometimes, uh, which radio was better to work with, and all I want to do is get out on this radio to get somebody coming to me for assistance, and that whether that was assistance for me or assistance for the individual that we were trying to help at the time. And that all depended on where you were at in the county, it all depended on where you were at in the county, it all depended sometimes on the intersection because I know that you had to learn certain dead spots within your post area, and you knew if you were approaching the intersection of Smith and Jones, that's a dead spot. So you want to pull the traffic stop on the other side of that intersection or just prior to that intersection because you knew if you were in the intersection, you may not get out over the radio. So you had to know these different things within your post area as well.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

It's it's hard to remember back to that, but I know exactly what you're talking about. It's just crazy.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Yeah, but once this new system came along, it was it was so much nicer knowing that you had a um a competent radio system, something that you could be sure of once you were out there on patrol.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

So, where where were you stationed at when the new system came on?

SPEAKER_02 12:55

When the new system came on, and and I was gonna ask you when was the date?

SPEAKER_03 12:59

93. Or excuse me, 95, I apologize. Yeah, because we're at 30-year anniversary, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:04

So in 95 I was assigned the headquarters in recruiting. So I had been away from the real law enforcement work of being a trooper. But when I went back to the Lansing post as a trooper in 97, it was all new to me at that time.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Yeah, then you had to learn the whole new radio system.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

And I had to learn a whole new radio system.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

So but it was two years past there and everything like that.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Correct, correct. But it was um for for me going having come from Flat Rock, coming to headquarters and being away for a couple years, it was um it was truly a blessing when I got back out to the post because I remember working uh here at the Lansing Post and Eaton County and just being away uh because we had three different counties here in the Lansing Post area, it didn't matter what county I was in, the radio was certain. So that that was always a good feeling.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

Yeah, and quite uh change from when you left the road to going back to the road, too.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Because I'll I'll tell you, in in being a troop at Flat Rock, there were days when we would have to come into Lansing to headquarters, and you know how you're supposed to notify district as you go from district to district when you're traveling. Um, it was always hard to sometimes catch that that radio dispatch center along the way to at least notify them that I've now left Wayne County, I'm out of my post area, I'm now in Livingston County, and I'm heading to headquarters or whatever. So sometimes those communications were scratchy, um, not clear. This was before cell phones, so we didn't have a phone in the car to call and say, hey, I'm moving through this area and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

So yeah. Do you remember? I mean, like the first time you were actually able to be in a in a patrol car and go from one district to another, yeah. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Uh it was um probably af after I was at Lansing and still from Lansing uh and being on the ES team was probably one of my uh times during the agency where I knew I was moving around the state because being on the ES team and being located here in Lansing, I got to do ES team calls throughout the state of Michigan. And so I would be moving from the first district to the 6th district to the 5th district to the 7th district on ES calls. And the vehicles that I was driving were based out of headquarters, but they all had the new radio systems where it was this was the button that I needed to push, this is the one I needed to communicate on, or I could always communicate with um operations.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Operations constantly, which we were both absolutely both of us were at operations at different points, but uh yeah, I with the ES team, I can't I can imagine that was a huge improvement to get onto that radio system. So I and I and working, like you said, at State Police Operations as a lieutenant, I cannot even imagine. I got because I obviously didn't I didn't work at state police operations with the old system, correct, but I can't imagine working on the old system.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah, that would have been an absolute nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Oh man. I mean, so many calls, especially ES team calls, bomb squad calls, URK. Things like that. You were calling districts, you know, three, four districts away from Lansing.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

And I can't imagine that I cannot imagine how you would have done that.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah, with the with an antiquated system that you weren't sure the signal was actually going out or coming back.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

That's that's crazy. Um obviously, uh long career, 31 years.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

31 years.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

And if you were look looking or talking with like students today or anybody who was interested in law enforcement or being a trooper or anything like that, what kind of advice would you give them after having been in for so long?

SPEAKER_02 16:42

My my advice, and this always this kind of goes back to even when I was a training officer, is that when you're looking to communicate on the radio, you need to know what it is that you want to say or what assistance that you're gonna need. And your communication needs to be clear, it needs to be concise, okay? Very much on point because you may only get that one opportunity to get that communication out. So I always tell people stay calm on the radio, okay, because when you're excited and the voice rises or you're not clear, it's harder for the dispatcher to understand what you're saying on the other end, and you don't want them to have to ask you, can you repeat that? Because you may not have the opportunity to repeat it. So that was always my advice is when you key the mic up, you better be clear, concise, because that may be your one and only opportunity to get that communication out.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Yeah. Well, it was great having you come in today, Joe. I really appreciate it, and thanks for coming in for our 30-year anniversary. Hard to believe that. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

I appreciate the invite. It's good seeing you guys again. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

You have been listening to tune in with MPSTS. This has been the MPSTS 30th anniversary edition podcast.com slash mpsds on YouTube, sound cloud, on X or Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and MPSTS.net