Freq Of Nature

As police radios change, hobbyists try to keep pace
[Source: Associated Press]

By Jason Straziuso

Hobbyists who listen in on police chases or ambulance runs with scanners have been frustrated in recent years as emergency departments increasingly switch to digital communications.

For them, Tuesday brought some good news, as the first digital scanners for consumers shipped to retailers.

Rich Wells said he would soon buy one of the new $300 handheld radios but would likely hold off on paying an extra $300 that would grant access to digital communications. He said many enthusiasts, however, would not hesitate at paying the price.

"Most serious people that listen to scanners, they own several different models and are used to spending several hundred dollars a year," said Wells, 36, who runs a hobbyist Web site from his home outside Raleigh, N.C.

Public safety departments and even some nonemergency city departments are increasingly replacing aging analog radios with digital units, which promise clearer transmissions and interoperability with other departments.

Interoperability was an issue that surfaced after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when police and fire units responding at the World Trade Center had trouble communicating.

Michigan State Police in October finished installing a $200 million statewide digital system. The system led to the apprehension of a person fleeing from Grand Rapids to Detroit because police could easily communicate, according to a spokesman at the Michigan's Public Safety Communications System office.

Even with Tuesday's shipment of Uniden radios, some hobbyists - and drug dealers and tow truck drivers, too, police point out - still won't be able to listen everywhere. Michigan, for instance, uses a system the new consumer scanners can't pick up. Uniden expects to have a unit that will pick up the majority of signals by late 2003, said Scott Carpenter, a products manager for the Fort Worth-based company.

The Philadelphia police just before Christmas converted from analog to digital at a cost of $52 million. The department now has 3,400 digital radios, Deputy Police Commissioner Charles Brennan said.

Philadelphia still transmits in analog, but will probably switch solely to digital by February, Brennan said. He said the switch hadn't yet been made, out of consideration for neighborhood-watch groups and news media that monitor police scanners.

"All we want to do is make sure that [the new radios] do what they say they'll be able to do," he said.

It's unclear exactly how many emergency departments nationwide have switched to digital systems, but it is the trend, said Ron Haraseth, a director of Project 25, an offshoot program of Association of Public-Safety Communications officials. The 12-year project created the technical standards behind the digital systems.

"A lot of federal agencies are mandating Project 25 for any new implementations. That's going to drive what happens in rest of local government," he said. "There's a big push for compatibility and interoperability."

posted by Tracy Justus at 1/2/2003