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What exactly do the detectives use? Are they trunked, or do they use one of the simplex channels?

Depends on what they're doing. Detectives don't use the radios nearly as much as patrol, but they have EDACS radios equipped with both simplex and trunked channels.

That seems fair. So they probably come up on the station's primary talkgroup.

You will probably only hear them going 10-97 or being 10-6 at some location, so dispatch knows where they are in case something goes wrong, but not much else.

That makes fair sense. I always thought detectives stay at the station.

There is a lot that they do in the field, it's just that they usually notify dispatch on the cellphone instead of the radio and most of the stuff they do (interviews, searches, etc.) has been pre-planned and does't require much use of the radio. If they spend a lot of time on the radio it's probably because they are doing a surveillance. Once they have sat in the station doing the legwork to find out WHO and WHERE the bad guy is they have to go out in the field to get him and do searches of locations where the bad guys may be hiding stolen property or contraband.

N6AJB wrote:There is a lot that they do in the field, it's just that they usually notify dispatch on the cellphone instead of the radio and most of the stuff they do (interviews, searches, etc.) has been pre-planned and does't require much use of the radio. If they spend a lot of time on the radio it's probably because they are doing a surveillance. Once they have sat in the station doing the legwork to find out WHO and WHERE the bad guy is they have to go out in the field to get him and do searches of locations where the bad guys may be hiding stolen property or contraband.

I was just thinking if they have a frequency/talkgroup where they talk amongst themselves (like L.A.P.D. has several Detective frequencies)?

The EDACS radios have a bunch of tactical TGs that can be used....none are specifically assigned to any one function like investigators.

I know each region has a Tac 17 and a Tac 18.

I just looked at my list I made from an EDACS HT, and there are ITAC 1 through 4, FTAC 1 through 4, FIREMARS, CLEMARS. I'm thinking they are non-trunked, like the jail freq, JAIL 2 866.600. The TGs for RPDC and RCRMC are in the EDACS radios but they are never used because the HTs can't connect with the control channel from inside the building (too much metal and cement) so they installed a repeater on the roof which is not trunked. None of this will matter anymore shortly though.