Outdated Radios Fail Capitol Police

But that project became bogged down in funding issues and differences among agencies, according to a report last year by the Justice Department's inspector general. Justice is hoping to start the network in the Washington area in 2009. Because of the delay, some federal agents are using unreliable equipment; 84 percent of the FBI's radio systems nationwide are obsolete, according to the report.

Officials in the Washington area emphasized that they have ways to connect local and federal forces with disparate equipment and bands. Dispatchers for various agencies can monitor one another's radios. And the Capitol Police and other agencies can use technical "patches" to tie themselves to other departments' radios. The Justice Department has spent more than $1 million installing a patching system for local and federal responders in the Washington area.

But patches can tie up an entire radio channel, limiting other communication, especially in older systems, officials said. Some patches can be unreliable or time-consuming to install.

Some experts are calling for building a national emergency communications system from scratch, instead of having agencies create new systems and then try to link them. It would be the first-responder equivalent of the kind of national network set up by cellphone companies.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to create such a system on a chunk of spectrum being vacated by television broadcasters switching from analog to digital signals. But the FCC has yet to find a commercial partner, and the system could take 10 years to complete.

Jerry Brito, a fellow with the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said only a national system can provide the efficiency and seamless communication emergency responders need.

"You have about 50,000 public-safety agencies in the country, everyone from the local sheriff in Mississippi to the FBI," he said. "Even if each agency wanted to get together and coordinate, it's impossible."