Police radio system under fire after murder-suicide

A multiple murder-suicide case that left five people dead in an upscale neighbourhood in Victoria this week is once again putting the spotlight on deficiencies in the local police force's radio communications system.

Published reports are raising questions about why it took so long for police to react to a frantic 911 callfrom a house in Oak Bay early Tuesday, where police later arrived to find the bloody remains of restaurateur Peter Kyun Joon Lee, his wife, six-year-old son, and his wife's parents.

A coroner has confirmed that all five were victims of a multiple murder-suicide, likely carried out by Lee, who allegedly stabbed his family to deathbefore turning a knife on himself.

Police have not yet said how long they took to respond. But the case is drawing attention to the unreliability of CREST, the Capital Region Emergency Service Telecommunications digital radio system used by police, fire, ambulance and military crews in Greater Victoria.

Sgt. Sean Plater, president of the police union in Victoria, said officers are "frustrated'' with the system, which has proven so unreliable that police in the city refuse to patrol the streets alone.

"They don't feel it provides them with the backup communication system they need,'' said Plater. "We have had many instances in Victoria where our officers have had to rely on the system and it didn't work.''

Two years ago, CREST was criticized afteran independent report concluded the system will fail in a major emergency. Then, during anemergency exercise in the fall of 2005, the system failed for about an hour. And during a windstorm in early November of that year, it failed again.

As a result, police routinely rely on cellphones as a backup, a practice that may have created difficulties in the Oak Bay neighbourhood where the murder suicide took place and where cellphone service is limited.

After they responded to the 3.00 a.m. 911 call, from a person who has not been named, police initiallyfound two bodies inside the home, but the smell of gasoline forced them to retreat. They finally entered the home about five hours later and found five bodies inside.

Police officers and firefighters in Victoria have been complaining publicly about the CREST system for over a year.