Listening to Music

[cvrules90]

EDACS mobiles do have a scan function, but patrol units are also equipped with scanners. You can't scan RPD on UHF with an 800 mHz trunked rafio, can you.

I did not know that. I will say I was once out in the booneys of Clark County Wash. and got to go on a ride-along with one of their deputies. I was suprised-they had a standard county-given radio, and another radio that monitors messages from State Patrol. Could it be then, that RSO cars monitor CHP or another surrounding PD on a scanner? That actually suprises me because I would think that they wouldn't allow scanners in addition to the standard two-way radios. Pretty interesting.

[sp1989]

RSO patrol cars have a receive only scanner installed (Bearcats of some description last time I looked close) for the purpose of monitoring surrounding agencies such as RPD, CHP, Cal Fire, and what not. One of the first skills you learn is listening for your own designator so you don't miss a call, along with monitoring what's happening around your patrol area via the scanner, all while listening to country & western music on the AM/FM radio. It comes as second nature after awhile, trust me =) I used to work with a deputy who was a scanner geek like us plus a rail fan, and his favorite thing to listen to on the scanner was train stuff. He was always reprogramming the scanner to train crap, including that gizmo that reports on the train status "The train is 14 cars long, blah, blah blah." He was an interesting lad...one time he had the intestinal fortitude to contact Star 80 (as it used to be called) to check out a UFO he was watching one night. Good times....

[cvrules90]

RSO patrol cars have a receive only scanner installed (Bearcats of some description last time I looked close) for the purpose of monitoring surrounding agencies such as RPD, CHP, Cal Fire, and what not. One of the first skills you learn is listening for your own designator so you don't miss a call, along with monitoring what's happening around your patrol area via the scanner, all while listening to country & western music on the AM/FM radio. It comes as second nature after awhile, trust me =) I used to work with a deputy who was a scanner geek like us plus a rail fan, and his favorite thing to listen to on the scanner was train stuff. He was always reprogramming the scanner to train crap, including that gizmo that reports on the train status "The train is 14 cars long, blah, blah blah." He was an interesting lad...one time he had the intestinal fortitude to contact Star 80 (as it used to be called) to check out a UFO he was watching one night. Good times....

And not to mention the whine of the radar gun.

[zz0468]

Could it be then, that RSO cars monitor CHP or another surrounding PD on a scanner? That actually suprises me because I would think that they wouldn't allow scanners in addition to the standard two-way radios. Pretty interesting.

Don't be surprised. That's exactly what they do. Scanners have been standard equipment in RSO patrol cars since the Norco bank robbery in the early 80's where a couple of deputies were ambushed and killed. A city PD helicopter was orbiting and watched the whole thing, but was unable to communicate the danger to the deputies, so scanners were added. It's a stopgap measure that's been effective enough to continue.

[sp1989]

Roger that, zz. I remember a veteran dep who was working in the era of the Norco incident, he told me that RSO and CHP both had scanners installed in their units, and they used them as a work around to communicate on incidents. I can't remember now exactly how it worked (it was a quarter century ago since I heard the story) but when RSO and CHP were both on VHF, they would use the receivers to communicate car to car. IIRC, RSO would monitor the transmit side of the CHP freq pair, and CHP would monitor the car to car RSO freq on their scanner, enabling direct comms.

[Mike_G_D]

Waaaay back in the early to mid 80's when I was in college in Arizona, a fellow student who was also a scanner nut and had some inside info (I can't remember whether it was as a ride-a-long or what) that the CHP and Arizona equivalent (DPS, I think?) used scanners as workarounds in the same way as just described by sp1989. That is, a simple cross band direct simplex link for car-to-car communications. AZ DPS was UHF and CHP, of course, was VHF-Low so they used each others' scanners to receive the opposite number's transmissions. Easy and cheap method which worked well back then. It would still and I know that the CHP, at least, still use scanners a lot given their wide coverage and inter-agency interaction needs. As most metropolitan and many large county LEO operations go more and more to fully encrypted and/or very specialized trunking systems I think regular consumer grade scanners will likely begin to fall out of favor and be replaced by the new multi-band mobile and portable professional gear - providing funds allow, of course. The CHP was trying to equip its newer vehicles with multiband professional gear and is still trying but, I think, given the funding issues, may be doing so in a slower fashion now. They were still using consumer grade scanners (Unidens and GRE's though, given the latter's issues as a company now, I wonder if they are still going that route - probably going back to solely using Uniden stuff if they do use scanners) but I can foresee the day coming when they may no longer be necessary or even useful.

-Mike

[cvrules90]

It IS the Arizona Department of Public Safety-DPS.