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The letter, signed by OPA president Matt Skof and SOA president Joan McKenna, was sent Friday to the force’s joint health and safety committee and then to all officers. The committee has since sent their concerns to the force.

“As you are aware the Ottawa Police Service has been part of a broader City of Ottawa project to introduce a unified communications system covering emergency and other services,” the letter begins.

That unified system is a $55-million dollar project that saw the city sign a 10-year contract with Bell. The legacy system used by police, which dates back to the mid-1990s, was declared at the end of its life in 2015.

The city expected to bring police on to the new system in 2015, but the work wasn’t done.

Bell was responsible for making sure the police legacy system was still working during the transition, but that requirement ended once the police were fully switched over in March of this year. The city has spent more than $10 million on equipment for the new system.

There are more than 4,200 radios on the new system that are used by several departments, like OC Transpo, public works and Ottawa fire. More than 1,650 radios at the police service were transitioned from the old system to the new one.

In November, before the police fully switched over, Pierre Poirier, city manager in charge of security and emergency management, told this newspaper that the city had achieved its goal of maintaining public safety throughout the transition.