News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Van Buren County installing a new radio system to allow for easier communication within the county jail.
Jail Administrator Jessica Grissom said the jail had been using cheap radios that worked well at first but have worn out after a couple years of use. Grissom said the new radios will be a major upgrade as jail employees currently have to use intercom units located throughout the facility to communicate.
“We’ll be able to hear what’s going on,” Grissom said. “Like in case of an emergency, we won’t have to stop what we’re doing to go to run to hit a button to call someone to come down and help us. We’ll have that in our hand and be able to call for assistance quickly.”
Grissom said the new system contains UHF radios similar to those used by the county’s deputies. Grissom said she hopes to have the system in use within the next couple weeks.
“When we came to work here when the sheriff was newly elected, there were no radios in the jail,” Grissom said. “So we started off by buying just cheap radios that our local fire department was using and they programmed them for us. So we’ve just kind of been waiting to build up to better radios so that’s what this is.”
Grissom said the majority of the purchase for some $7,000 will be covered by the county and the rest will come from her department. Grissom said the jail’s portion was supposed to be paid for by a recently awarded training grant but that specific item ended up being denied from the grant.
“Twenty years ago these would have been out of reach for our county,” Grissom said. “But now everything’s just kind of more technology, things have gotten cheaper, so this is actually such a good quality radio for us to have.”
Grissom said the installation and set-up of the new system will be handled by the Nashville-based company the radios are coming from. Grissom said a representative of the company came to the jail and made the radios work all throughout the building.
