Mobile Amateur Radio Corps (MARC)
Hennepin County Sheriff's Office
9300 Naper Street
Golden Valley, MN 55427
MARC is a volunteer unit of the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. The
unit consists of up to 35 authorized special deputies who hold Amateur
Radio licenses. MARC special deputies are trained to operate the 37'
mobile Incident Communications Center (ICC), which provides on-scene
communications during emergency and non-emergency public safety events.
MARC also has 4 Amateur Radio repeaters in the Twin Cities metro area.
Unit members are experienced communicators who incorporate their
knowledge of radio systems and communication protocols to keep
important information flowing during an event. MARC members regularly
practice different functions that assist incident commanders to
efficiently accumulate and disseminate information. Shadowing incident
commanders reduces the multi-tasking workload of decision makers during
an incident. Providing on-scene incident dispatching eliminates the
confusion and potentially dangerous clogging of a single channel for an
event. MARC can coordinate responding resources and manage existing
relationships with other volunteer organizations such as the American
Red Cross, Salvation Army and the Amateur Radio community.
I've
been a member of MARC for 30 years. I was the lead team member
specifying the requirements for the ICC. I have held all elected
offices and am currently the newsletter editor and Equipment
Lieutenant, an appointed position.
Typical monthly newsletter
