The shocking September stabbing in Deep River continues to reverberate at the council table.
Town council was informed last week the violent attack exposed a flaw in the communications system used by the Deep River Police Service.
“The incident that occurred several weeks back highlighted an infrastructure inefficiency with the police radios,” Deep River’s chief administrative officer, Sean Patterson told council.
He explained the town’s current radios are incompatible with those used by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), which was brought in to assist with the investigation.
“Our system, which is quite antiquated, is not encrypted-capable and is not compatible with the OPP,” he said, adding Police Chief Mark Kane consulted with Patterson on the matter.
With an election in the offing, council had previously delegated time-sensitive decision-making authority to the chief administrative officer, and Patterson used that authority to reach out to a North Bay company the town had dealt with in the past for a new set of radios, compatible with the OPP, costing just over $60,000.
Patterson said the purchase would be funded from reserves.
The incident also prompted the town to kick-start development of a municipal alerting system, with Patterson telling council in September a report would be coming to council with a proposal to move forward in that regard.
A report was not on the table at last week’s meeting, with Patterson telling council instead town that staff anticipate implementing an alerting system “in the coming weeks”…
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