Homeland Security? Schaumburg police responded about 9:10 a.m. Thursday to a security alarm on Martingale Road showing possible entry to a public safety emergency communications tower and facility for fire and police communications. Police arrived on the scene and found nothing at the address. An alert police officer recalled that a different address up the street housed emergency communications equipment. When police arrived to the second address, they discovered workers on the roof of the building. Police checked with their police desk to see if any personnel were authorized to be on the roof before they confronted the workers on the roof. No workers were scheduled on the roof according to Schaumburg’s police desk, and no workers were authorized to be on the roof, according to Northwest Central Dispatch — the 9-1-1 center for our area.
Police confronted the workers, who said they were contractors authorized to be at the facility. Police determined they were O.K. to be working on the roof, even though their authorization was not known to radio supervisors.
Apparently, Northwest Central Central dispatch has requested that Motorola update their records for the radio site burglary alarm several times, but Motorola has fail to comply. Apparently police have responded to the wrong address on several occasions. Also, the proper authorization for contractors working today was not requested through the proper channels.
Schaumburg-based Motorola is a U.S. public company with worldwide telecommunication service. After losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company was divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011. Motorola Mobility, Inc. is an American telecommunications equipment corporation owned by Google and headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Libertyville, Illinois. On August 15, 2011, Google Inc. announced that it had agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility.
Motorola Solutions consists of the Government, Public Safety and Enterprise Mobility Solutions divisions of the former Motorola, Inc. Motorola Solutions also previously included a Networks division, which it sold to Nokia Siemens Networks in a transaction that was completed on April 29, 2011. An operational headquarters for Nokia Siemens is located at the former Motorola site at 1501 West Shure Drive in Arlington Heights.
Motorola is currently working on bringing the northwest suburbs public safety communications on board to StarCom21 — a statewide public safety trunked radio system in Illinois. StarCom21 is owned and operated by Motorola. The State of Illinois is also a major partner in StarCom21, which is already used by all Illinois State Police posts as well as the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (ISTHA) Maintenance and Police divisions. Several other Illinois communities’ public safety communications are also already on the StarCom21 network.
Most of the northwest suburban police and fire departments are currently grouped together on their own digital-trunked radio system. The Motorola radios on the system are no longer supported by Motorola.
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