Warren County took a major step in its transition to a new, universal radio system on Tuesday.

County law enforcement entities went live.

“We switched law enforcement over to our P-25 radio system today,” Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison said.

Officers from Youngsville Borough Police, City of Warren Police, Conewango Township Police, Warren County Sheriff’s Office, and Warren County Probation all switched over.

That’s about 60 hand-held radios, according to McCorrison, as well as radios in vehicles and stations.

“It went very, very well,” he said. “This morning, we had to fine-tune a couple things.”

But, by 4:30 p.m., everything was in place and running smoothly.

The general consensus among the officers who spoke to McCorrison was that the equipment delivered a much clearer signal than they were used to.

For now, the interoperability hasn’t changed much.

Law enforcement agencies were able to communicate with each other in the past. Until Tuesday, county and local agencies were using analog VHF radios, while state entities, including the Pennsylvania State Police, Pennsylvania Game Commission and Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission officers, PennDOT and Department of Conservation and Natural Resources — including Chapman State Park — were using the P-25 system.

“Police could talk to police,” McCorrison said. “Fire and EMS could not talk to them.”

That is the next phase of the roll-out and it is a critical one.

“Routinely we have situations where we shut down a state highway, or we need PennDOT to put cinders down on the road… or any number of situations,” McCorrison said.

During a recent search and rescue operation, the benefit of the new system was demonstrated.

“Fire was talking to police over the Game Commission channel and they were able to have a successful outcome to their search and rescue,” McCorrison said. “It’s those types of situations that just didn’t happen in the past.”

Over the next few months, officials will continue to make adjustments to the fire and EMS radios.

“We’re doing this in phases,” McCorrison said. “Right now we’ve got law enforcement cut over. We’ll study that and see if any improvements are needed for fire and EMS.”

There are about 200 more hand-held radios in his office that will be distributed to responders once the fine-tuning is complete.

“What we learned in the law enforcement roll-out is, we need to test, re-test, and continue to test,” he said. “We need to keep learning from what we’ve done and continue to improve as we go.”

A majority — about 75 percent — of the base units and vehicle units are already in place, he said.

The new radios are digital — a clarity upgrade from the old radios — can utilize towers outside of Warren County and are trunked — user groups don’t have to worry about assigning frequencies.

“I’m really happy that we were able to push out a quality product to these guys,” McCorrison said. “In the end it’s all about officer safety.”