Cops and fire dept. scanner changes

[Scott_Roberson]

I work for a small newspaper in central Indiana. At the moment both police and fire departments are still using the old analog systems but are upgrading to a trunked system soon. The Sheriffs dept. uses laptops to do some communication but still rely on their radios alot. The city police use Nextels and digital pagers along with the radios. What I have done is create a good relationship with the fire department and inturn was issued a digital paper which allows me to get pages anytime major incidents happen like the water rescue team, confined space team or when off duty personel are called in. I get the same page the officers and fireman receive allowing me to arrive at the scene close to the same time they do.

[DavidHarpe]

The new technology is going to make monitoring public services much more difficult. APCO 25 is a selectively monitorable digital standard that many departments are moving towards lately. APCO25 capable scanners are out there, but they're more expensive.

In Louisville, most of our services are VHF/UHF and therefore still monitorable. But many of the police have laptops in their cars, and many warrant-checks and registrations go through that system. I think that's a good thing personally, because if they use the radio to do a check they transmit your personal information (sometimes SS number) over a trivially monitored channel.

Most of the police officers these days use cellphones for discreet communication. When police dispatch gets a run that is sensitive, they will use the radio to send the address and ten-code, then they will say something like "502 call channel 2 for further".

Like so many things in photography, it's going to come down to personal relationships. Go to the police and fire charity events to do some networking. Take some good shots for them and give them some prints for free. One of my mentors once said, "Never underestimate the power of an 8x10."

If you do that and you also get a reputation as someone who is good onscene, it will help your situation a great deal. Your friends in the department will help you out. This is easier when you're in a small town because word will travel faster. In a larger city, it's very difficult to network with everyone you need to. At that point it's up to the news director to do the schmoozing at the management level.

A backdoor approach is to network with someone at a non-competing media outlet like a TV station.

Dave