After years of planning, Gloucester County recently put its new radio communications system into operation.

Garrey Curry, Gloucester’s public works director, said the new radio system went online Dec. 6. Initially, only the sheriff’s office is using the new system, Curry said, with plans to convert the radio service for volunteer fire and rescue squads and for several county departments—including utilities, animal control, and buildings and grounds—early in 2011.

"It’s fantastic," D.W. Warren, chief deputy of the Gloucester Sheriff’s Office, said of the new system. It provides law enforcement officers with "a comfortable feeling," he said, since they have much better access to emergency dispatchers, other officers and first responders in the field.

Previously, there were some "dead zones" in the county, Curry and Warren said, especially in Guinea in the lower end of Gloucester. Warren said there were instances w...