The River Falls Council agreed to spend $1,300 to purchase loaner radios for the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

Police Chief Cody Warren said he was approached by ALEA’s Lt. Chris Inabinett to see if the town would loan the department some of their digital radios.

Warren said that all the local departments have switched to digital radios, but ALEA uses a different frequency and cannot hear when local law enforcement officials are trying to contact them.

“They have no clue when we are calling for help,” Warren said.

Warren told the council the town currently has no spare radios, but asked if they could purchase them to loan.

Additionally, Warren said ALEA would provide extra help on cases and back-up when needed on cases such as narcotics and murder investigations in exchange for use of the radios.

Warren told the council the radios were about $680 each and the council agreed to purchase two.

“They have the people to install them,” he said. “We would loan them to Chris and he would be responsible for them.”

Warren said he would make them sign an agreement that if something happened to the radios ALEA would be responsible.

Councilmember Harold Barnes said he liked the idea of River Falls Police having back-up, especially in tumultuous times when officers are getting beaten up and killed. Warren said they most recently had an incident where there was a wreck in Gantt and no deputy to go to the incident because they were responding to another call.

He responded to the wreck because he was the closest officer to the wreck – or so they thought.

There was a trooper less than a minute a way, but he couldn’t hear their radios.