Case Study: Two-Way Radio Communications Kudos from City of Eugene

Thank you from the Eugene Police Department’s Traffic Safety Unit!

The Eugene Police Department’s Traffic Safety Unit (TSU) hosted our annual state-wide motorcade (dignitary escort) training day on August 12th, 2025. This training brought approximately 30 law enforcement motorcycle officers and 20 community safety officers from throughout Oregon to our area for a full day. This training prepared law enforcement officers to safely and effectively escort and protect a principal (such as a dignitary or VIP) during travel. The training included classroom instruction and hands-on exercises in defensive and evasive riding, route planning, formations, and emergency response to threats like vehicle ambushes. The goal was to improve the safety of the motorcade and the public and ensure smooth transportation even under difficult and dangerous circumstances.

Inter-agency collaboration brings officers together when needed to provide enough staffing to ensure the safety of all participants in large motorcade missions. However, when officers from different agencies work together, they typically bring the communication equipment native to their specific region. Hosting agencies often loan out handheld radios if available and/or attempt to share network addresses in hopes of programming radios ahead of those events and/or training. This poses its own challenges for motor officers who need both hands to safely operate their assigned unit as we cannot swap out the radio base on the motorcycle itself. Some communication systems also require programming the unique radio IDs directly onto the network, which isn’t feasible for various reasons.

The City of Eugene is blessed to have amazing radio communications staff, Bob Chandler and Kevin Schrouder (of Silke Communications), who perform amazing work and are tireless when assisting us with radio communications to make our events and training(s) as safe and successful as possible. Leading up to our recent multi-agency training, Bob and Kevin were instrumental in identifying a network/frequency we could utilize and locate a means for receiving and transmitting the communications in an extremely rugged environment. Bob and Kevin identified and procured the necessary permission to employ temporary use of a Silke antenna in our region. They used their networking skills to gain approval through their business partners and then spent hours building the temporary network. All those efforts allowed for a safe and successful training day for the officers and the local community.

The Eugene Police TSU extends a large THANK YOU to Bob, Kevin and the staff at Silke Communications who assisted with this endeavor!