"We would like to provide the best services we can provide to our county citizens to the best of our ability," Chief Deputy of San Jacinto County Sheriff's Office Stanley Jolly said.
Previous San Jacinto County Sheriff leadership told ABC13 that their emergency radio systems have been unreliable as early as 2018.
This problem came to the center stage in 2023 when Francisco Oropeza shot and killed his five neighbors. Law enforcement officials who responded to the crime scene said they had to begin a manhunt for an armed and dangerous suspect, with no guarantee they could communicate with each other or dispatch.
In 2024, there was a push to declare the failing radio system an emergency, but county commissioners voted against it. Now, two years later, county leaders say a fix is still far off.
"We were promised a grant through DETCOG, and they are doing it region-wide," San Jacinto Judge Fritz Faulkner said.
DETCOG, the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, has San Jacinto County set to receive part of a $9.5 million grant that will improve emergency radio systems across five counties. But the work isn't scheduled to be done until mid 2028, about ten years after the problem first arose.
"It should have been fixed two years prior to our arrival here," Jolly said.
Jolly said in a rural state with a small tax base, the decision of how to fund the project has held it up. Now, he's keeping his fingers crossed that the work scheduled will provide coverage for the entire county.
"They're going to use existing towers to put the repeaters on, which is fine. It gets the job done, we're just waiting to see what happens," Jolly said.
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