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Detroit Police, Emergency Radio System Goes Offline Again

DETROIT (WWJ) - For the second time in six weeks, Detroit police, fire and EMS were forced to work without an operating emergency radio system.

The Motorola dispatch system used by the city's public safety departments was put back online around 4 a.m. Tuesday after the system unexpectedly shut down overnight.

Police say 911 calls weren't affected during the outage. However, all officers, firefighters and EMS crews out on the streets were left without a central way to communicate.

Reports say all police officers were called back to their precincts overnight out of concern for their safety, while EMS crews continued making runs with their personal cell phones.

It wasn't immediately clear how long the system was down or what caused the outage.

It's the second outage in less than two months. In early July, the dispatch system was down for almost four hours, delaying police response to over a dozen priority one calls and more than 100 non-priority calls.

At that time, incoming Police Chief James Craig said there was a lack of accountability for doing the necessary upkeep on the system.

A source told WWJ there have been problems with the Motorola system since before the 9-11 terror attacks; and that someone dropped the ball because there is no backup system.

Stay with WWJ Newsradio 950 and CBSDetroit.com for the latest.

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