[EAS] Honolulu Police to Stop Using Live Computers During Emergency Alert Training

[Sean Donelan]

On Fri, 20 Sep 2019, Bill Ruck wrote:
> My experience is that the fire service is conditioned to train and generally 
> does a good job of following SOP.
>
> On the other hand cops want to be out busting perps and getting them to sit 
> through training is difficult.
>
> YMMV

Them are fighting words.... Only about 100 jurisdictions have combined 
police and fire deparments. There are cultural differences between police 
and fire departments.  It varies even more geographically between 
departments in the Northeast, West, South and Mid-west.

According to most recent NFPA data, about 83% of U.S. fire departments are 
all volunteer or mostly volunteer. Rural and small communities generally 
have volunteer firefighters, while larger cities have career 
firefighters.  There are approximately 29,819 fire departments in the U.S.

Likewise, according to BJS data, about 49% of 17,985 police departments 
have fewer than 10 full-time officers. BJS data excludes departments 
with only part-time or all-volunteer officers, about 5% of agencies.

Small and mid-sized police and fire departments are less likely to have 
specialist training or equipment.  While all 50 states have one or more 
state-level agencies with IPAWS access, very few of the 29,819 fire and 
17,985 police departments will be able to pay for training or equipment to 
use IPAWS. Setting up mutual aid agreements for public alerting and 
warning may be the only way they can afford to use IPAWS.

New York City and Los Angeles aren't representative of the rest of the 
country.