In 2005, ILEAS distributed 500 VHF radios to law enforcement agencies throughout the State of Illinois. These radios were placed in hardened cases and programmed with statewide interoperability frequencies for use in emergencies. By law, ILEAS was required to keep track of those radios for a minimum of 7 years. We passed that deadline three years ago. ILEAS has decided that every agency that received and still possesses one of these VHF radios be given the option of keeping it OR to return it to ILEAS. On June 25th, ILEAS sent letters to each of those agencies requesting each agency take one of those options. ILEAS has heard from just over 100 agencies to date. Click here for a copy of that letter.
The radios that are returned will be placed in a mobile cache to be transported to a disaster or incident to supplement local communications capabilities. Recently, a community on the Mississippi had flooding issues and requested an ILEAS Mobile Field Force to assist. ILEAS staff programmed this agency's frequencies into these cached VHF radios. As a results, the responding Mobile Field Force officers easily communicated with the local officers on the local frequencies during the event. This cache will be an excellent resource for responding officers as well as for the requesting agency to facilitate mutual aid communications. ILEAS encourages evey agency still holding one these radios to return it if they are not using it now.