After spending $7 million on upgrades to comply with a federal 2013 deadline to switch police radio communications from analog to digital, Pasadena encrypted its main frequency, blocking access to outsiders. Listening in on police radio transmissions is a technique media organizations have used for decades to stay on top of breaking public safety events. It’s also a technique, police say, that criminals use to their advantage.

The Burbank Police Department, which has also switched to digital, is considering encrypting a few additional channels after noticing more people getting in the way of field operations or emergency responses, Lt. John Dilibert said.

While it’s not a top priority for the department, the people are “doing enough to become distracting to the officer or even fire personnel or paramedics,” he said.

South Pasadena police officials say they plan to encrypt their channels when they make the switch to digital June 1, and San Marino is considering a similar move.

“Currently, our radio is not encrypted, but it is becoming more and more common as criminals become better at monitoring it,” San Marino Police Chief John Schaefer said.

Though he lacked statistics, Schaefer said, “I can tell you it is not at all uncommon to discover that the people we arrest either have a scanner or radio.”

Pasadena Police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said that while it’s not required by federal officials, her department chose to encrypt its channel to protect victims’ privacy and the safety of its officers.

“When we conduct search warrants, parole and probation searches, we have found scanners,” she said.

But despite claims of interference and criminal radio monitoring, agencies adopting the encryption method can’t quantify how large of a problem it is because they do not track such incidents.

James Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said local police agencies may be well within the law to encrypt their frequencies, but it comes at the expense of public oversight.

“It’s a way for law enforcement agencies to further insulate themselves from public scrutiny,” Ewert said. “From a newspaper’s perspective, we see allowing journalists to use scanners as helpful to law enforcement agencies so that newspapers and their websites can instantly communicate that something is happening.”

Others note that the closed system erodes public trust by clouding government transparency.

“If we’re paying for their salaries, why shouldn’t we be able to tap into their frequency; it doesn’t make any sense,” said Steve Ruiz, a radio enthusiast in Alhambra who’s been monitoring public safety frequencies for 23 years. “You could be inviting something sinister to occur if there’s no one there to monitor them.”

In Glendale — the largest of the area police departments — only tactical or undercover operations are encrypted, and there are no plans to change.

Allowing public and media access gives the city another set of ears and eyes in policing such a large area, Glendale Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

“We can flip a switch any time and go encrypted,” he said. “We don’t see the need for it in the near future.”

But representatives for the smaller agencies say protections for victims and police officers outweigh any consideration to access for the public and media.

“One of the unintended consequences when we encrypted was that the media and casual listeners would not have real-time information,” Riddle said.

But other public-access issues are also nagging the Pasadena Police Department, which unlike its neighbors, does not provide a daily arrest log because of what officials attribute to constrained resources and an antiquated system that doesn’t filter out private information.

Riddle said the department is looking to hire an analyst to produce that information in the coming months, and pointed out that incidents can be tracked through crimemapping.com, which lists most crimes that have occurred in Pasadena in the last 24 hours.

Glendale and Burbank regularly post their arrest logs to their police websites.

“Providing real-time information is not something that we may be able to immediately overcome for the media’s interest,” Riddle said. “Our responsibility is public safety and that’s going to be our primary mission.”

In the end, officials say the tension between police and the public-access issue may ease if agencies can find an acceptable work-around. Police officials have expressed willingness to find a middle ground.

One possibility for San Marino, Schaefer said, would be to adopt Glendale’s model of leaving the primary channel open, but encrypting secondary channels for tactical purposes.

“I understand the media has an interest in knowing,” he said. “We will find a way to make it work.”

Source: http://www.pasadenasun.com

tri-city area settle into new digital radio systems, many departments have made, or are considering making, those communications secret, saying it is a response to a growing propensity of listeners to interfere with operations.

After spending $7 million on upgrades to comply with a federal 2013 deadline to switch police radio communications from analog to digital, Pasadena encrypted its main frequency, blocking access to outsiders. Listening in on police radio transmissions is a technique media organizations have used for decades to stay on top of breaking public safety events. It’s also a technique, police say, that criminals use to their advantage.

The Burbank Police Department, which has also switched to digital, is considering encrypting a few additional channels after noticing more people getting in the way of field operations or emergency responses, Lt. John Dilibert said.

While it’s not a top priority for the department, the people are “doing enough to become distracting to the officer or even fire personnel or paramedics,” he said.

South Pasadena police officials say they plan to encrypt their channels when they make the switch to digital June 1, and San Marino is considering a similar move.

“Currently, our radio is not encrypted, but it is becoming more and more common as criminals become better at monitoring it,” San Marino Police Chief John Schaefer said.

Though he lacked statistics, Schaefer said, “I can tell you it is not at all uncommon to discover that the people we arrest either have a scanner or radio.”

Pasadena Police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said that while it’s not required by federal officials, her department chose to encrypt its channel to protect victims’ privacy and the safety of its officers.

“When we conduct search warrants, parole and probation searches, we have found scanners,” she said.

But despite claims of interference and criminal radio monitoring, agencies adopting the encryption method can’t quantify how large of a problem it is because they do not track such incidents.

James Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said local police agencies may be well within the law to encrypt their frequencies, but it comes at the expense of public oversight.

“It’s a way for law enforcement agencies to further insulate themselves from public scrutiny,” Ewert said. “From a newspaper’s perspective, we see allowing journalists to use scanners as helpful to law enforcement agencies so that newspapers and their websites can instantly communicate that something is happening.”

Others note that the closed system erodes public trust by clouding government transparency.

“If we’re paying for their salaries, why shouldn’t we be able to tap into their frequency; it doesn’t make any sense,” said Steve Ruiz, a radio enthusiast in Alhambra who’s been monitoring public safety frequencies for 23 years. “You could be inviting something sinister to occur if there’s no one there to monitor them.”

In Glendale — the largest of the area police departments — only tactical or undercover operations are encrypted, and there are no plans to change.

Allowing public and media access gives the city another set of ears and eyes in policing such a large area, Glendale Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

“We can flip a switch any time and go encrypted,” he said. “We don’t see the need for it in the near future.”

But representatives for the smaller agencies say protections for victims and police officers outweigh any consideration to access for the public and media.

“One of the unintended consequences when we encrypted was that the media and casual listeners would not have real-time information,” Riddle said.

But other public-access issues are also nagging the Pasadena Police Department, which unlike its neighbors, does not provide a daily arrest log because of what officials attribute to constrained resources and an antiquated system that doesn’t filter out private information.

Riddle said the department is looking to hire an analyst to produce that information in the coming months, and pointed out that incidents can be tracked through crimemapping.com, which lists most crimes that have occurred in Pasadena in the last 24 hours.

Glendale and Burbank regularly post their arrest logs to their police websites.

“Providing real-time information is not something that we may be able to immediately overcome for the media’s interest,” Riddle said. “Our responsibility is public safety and that’s going to be our primary mission.”

In the end, officials say the tension between police and the public-access issue may ease if agencies can find an acceptable work-around. Police officials have expressed willingness to find a middle ground.

One possibility for San Marino, Schaefer said, would be to adopt Glendale’s model of leaving the primary channel open, but encrypting secondary channels for tactical purposes.

“I understand the media has an interest in knowing,” he said. “We will find a way to make it work.”

Obama is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport shortly after 3 p.m. and fly by helicopter to the Veterans Administration hospital near UCLA.

Traffic in the area could back up as late as 11 p.m., when Obama travels from the fundraiser to the Beverly Hilton, where he usually stays when in the Los Angeles area.

Thursday morning rush hour traffic could also be more severe than usual, as Obama leaves his hotel for a 7 a.m. breakfast fundraiser at the Corona del Mar home of Jeff and Nancy Stack, according to Bruce Gillman of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

Gillman urged drivers “to please obey the directions of any police and traffic officers deployed on city streets in support of the president’s visit.”

Secret Service Special Agent Joseph Beaty said traffic delays “are not something we ignore. We realize that the people of L.A. have to work and go home, and we do take that into consideration when we’re planning the security of the president.”

“We want to be as least intrusive as we have to be,” Beaty said.

Rosendahl, who chairs the Transportation Committee, said Obama’s travel to an evening fundraiser is likely to cause some delays along the major east- west routes of Santa Monica, Wilshire and Sunset boulevards.

Rosendahl said he conferred with White House staff, the Secret Service and Los Angeles police officials about Obama’s visit and was assured the security will use so-called “soft closures,” shutting down and re-opening streets as Obama’s motorcade comes and goes, rather than extended closures of several possible routes to his destination.

“It will be a very, very un-impactful, quick trip,” Rosendahl said.

Obama’s Travel Itinerary:

WEDNESDAY:

4 p.m.: Arrive at LAX
4:45 p.m.: Helicopter from LAX to VA hospital in West LA
5:15 p.m.: Motorcade to Beverly Hills (watch out for closures on east to west routes)
9:00 p.m. Motorcade back to his hotel

THURSDAY:

8:30 a.m.: Depart LA for Corona del Mar via helicopter
11:00 a.m.: Return from Corona del Mar via helicopter to LAX
12 noon: Depart LAX for San Francisco.

Even earlier, in 1930, Pasadena became the third city in the state, following Berkeley and Tulare, with police radio at all – an independent station broadcasted one-way alerts to officers in the field, including the “all-points bulletin” that became a cinema staple.

As soon as police radio was born, so was the time-honored tradition of both hobbyists – cop-shop groupies, you might say – and newshawks listening in to the transmissions. Police scanner radios became a staple of newsrooms, very much including this one.

So for over 80 years, police reporters and city editors at newspapers in the San Gabriel Valley have made sure the static-filled, squawk-box sound of police radio transmissions is a constant in the background of our newsrooms.

You get used to it, we assure you. And you learn to tune your ears so that the unimportant stuff goes right past you, while the infrequent breaking news – a fire, a major accident, a barricaded felon with a gun – sends you out to cover the story for our readers.

Crooks? Perhaps they are listening, too, though few bad guys of our acquaintance are so organized.

Last month, the PPD switched over to an encrypted, digital radio system, at great expense. It would be more secure in case of a major emergency, authorities said. City Hall staffers said they would consider loaning media outlets decoding scanners.

Hasn’t happened. And now, after eight decades of public access to the transmissions, the department says it’s not so sure that access should continue.

Here at a time when crime rates of all sorts are plunging, the Pasadena Police Department claims that criminal elements will have too much access to news of officer deployments if scanners are made available.

Which criminal elements? The ones that have been able to listen in since 1930? The cat burglars in newsrooms? The department never said it was going to loan scanners to street gangs.

The Pasadena Police Department, one of the oldest in Southern California, unfortunately has a long history of claiming to be among the most open to communication with the media, while actually operating as one of the most controlling and close-mouthed.

Police Chief Phillip Sanchez claims that “Transparency is a primary mission of the City of Pasadena,” but talk is cheap. After so many decades of actual radio transparency, Sanchez now wants media outlets to file Public Record Requests for transcripts of transmissions – transmissions we can’t hear, so how do we know what to ask for? How does it help us cover crime in the community when police can legally put a hold on such records for 10 “business” days, and find excuses to do so for much longer?

Even when papers produced copy just once a day, reporters could hear police radio. Now, in the 24-hour news cycle, in what way is such a clamp-down on information part of what Sanchez calls “continued transparency to the community”? Given the radio silence, how can he say, with a straight face, “It is never our intent to decrease access to the department’s voice communications”? In his “1984,” that’s what George Orwell dubbed “Newspeak” – the destruction of words through their misuse.

If you mean what you say, chief, end the radio censorship today.

Receiving this grant enables the department to upgrade current communications equipment to meet the standards of Project 25.

San Diego and Imperial Counties are preparing to replace the current Regional Communications System (RCS) with a new Project 25 network by 2013.  New XTS 5000 radios will replace the XTS 3000 radios currently used by some personnel and will allow our firefighters to communicate on both the existing RCS and P25 networks.   Radios are essential to the firefighters’ communication system as they enable firefighters to communicate with other fire, law enforcement, emergency medical services, hospital, and public service agencies.

Receiving this grant under the AFG program makes it possible for the Encinitas Fire Department to retire aged communication equipment and allows firefighters to safely protect life and property.  Furthermore, this grant has regional benefits as reflected in frequency which Encinitas provides assistance to other fire departments, including Solana Beach, Del Mar, and Carlsbad.

Source: http://thecoastnews.com/

The proposed contract now goes back to the Santa Ana City Council for final review on February 6th. If approved it would save Santa Ana about $10 million annually, and could take effect as early as April 2012.

The Santa Ana stations would be absorbed as Battalion 9, apparently in Division 6. Stations 1-6 will become 71-76, and stations 7-10 will become 67-70, respectively.

Sworn firefighters would bring with them their Santa Ana seniority dates and be considered as having passed their probation with OCFA on the date of transition (as long as they’ve already passed probation at Santa Ana). The senior-most 144 of them will have a few more seniority perks than those below them.

15 non-sworn SAFD personnel, including six dispatchers, will be offered employment with OCFA, but they will be considered new hires with no seniority and have to serve a new probation period.

OCFA seems to be growing at a pretty good clip having added 4 cities in the last few years. After Santa Ana enters, OCFA will cover 23 of the counties 34 cities.

OCFA also has bids out with Brea, Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa, and that absorbing Santa Ana could make OCFA’s proposals for two of them even more compelling as they share borders with Santa Ana and would further benefiting from improved resource access and utilization in the immediate region which could likely reduced their contracting cost.

Source: RadioReference.com Forums

“This is a great leap forward for the county,” Supervisor Bob Buster said Tuesday, during a progress report to the Board of Supervisors. “And I hope it matches its promise.”

Undersheriff Colleen Walker said the increased ability to communicate should improve safety for deputies and the public.

Kevin Crawford, chief information officer, told supervisors that obstacles remain, such as rising costs, a rash of copper thefts, lack of power at seven tower sites, and heavy snow at two sites on mountain peaks.

Still, Crawford said the county expects to bring the system online in December.

It’s about time, Walker said.

“We were supposed to be online in October of 2010,” she said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

“There have been a lot of delays. But to me, we can actually see light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, it better happen (in December). There better not be any more delays.”

Through the project, the county is more than tripling the number of its communication-tower sites from 23 to 76, Crawford said.

According to a written report, the county is moving to an advanced network of multiple frequencies that will reach dead spots that now frustrate sheriff’s deputies and won’t fail because of interference from cellphone communication sites.

“Hopefully, now every time we click that button to talk or to listen or to call for help, it will work,” Walker said.

She said the goal is to enable deputies in the field to communicate by portable radio with the sheriff’s dispatch center from 95 percent of the county’s territory.

“Right now we have way, way less than that,” Walker said. “We probably don’t even have 60 percent coverage. It’s absolutely awful. The radio is their lifeline. We encounter things on a moment’s notice and we need to radio for help.”

In addition, patrol vehicles and portable radios will be equipped with GPS devices that pinpoint officers’ location, she said.

Crawford said the county plans to install equipment in 1,514 sheriff’s vehicles between March and October.

Walker said the upgrades should leave little room for the repeat of a frustrating aspect of an August 2008 incident, in which investigator Rick Espinoza was shot in the face near Desert Hot Springs.

“He got shot and nobody knew where he was,” she said.

Espinoza survived.

The Sheriff’s Department patrols unincorporated areas and, by contract, 17 of Riverside County’s 27 cities. Among them are Canyon Lake, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Temecula and Wildomar.

Officer safety aside, Walker said, the increased ability to communicate should aid searches for lost hikers in the mountains, where radio coverage is spotty.

Besides boosting voice communication, the system will enable deputies to send in written reports, photos and videos from the field, Walker said.

An officer will be able to take a thumbprint and quickly determine a person’s identity, she said.

Battalion Chief Ron Arbo said county firefighters will benefit, too.

Arbo said every fire engine has a computer on board that transmits its location and other information. But in some areas, such as the unincorporated communities of Anza and Sage east of Temecula, transmissions aren’t picked up.

With the improvements, Arbo said, the county’s dispatch center will be able to assign engines to calls more efficiently.

He said the center dispatches the closest engine when a call comes in. If an engine is somewhere it can’t be tracked, he said, that’s problematic; the center assumes it is at its last known location.

“They could be miles from there,” he said.

The system was to debut in October 2010, but interference from Sprint Nextel communication sites forced the county to redesign its network, according to the report. That triggered a 12-month delay.

The county also blames roadblocks encountered with landowners and federal agencies whose properties were being sought for that delay.

For example, residents resisted efforts to locate a tower in El Cariso Village in the mountains above Lake Elsinore. “We had to pull back,” Walker said. “They didn’t want it.”

Now the county is preparing to lease a site in Orange County near the Ortega Highway, or Highway 74, she said.

Delays, and the need for more towers than first thought, have driven up the cost by millions of dollars, the report said.

And Walker said copper thefts have compounded problems.

“Fortunately, it’s on Motorola’s dime, because we haven’t accepted the project,” Walker said. “But it still has caused delays.”

Motorola is building the system for the county.

Verizon has deployed its state-of-the-art mobile command center near the stadium to serve as a backup emergency operations center for the city of Indianapolis during the Super Bowl.

The command center will help the city maintain operations in the event of an emergency or a disaster.  If the need arises, emergency activities directed from the city’s primary emergency operations center can be transferred to the Verizon mobile command center to facilitate seamless continuity of operations.

Containing the latest technology and communications equipment, the 51-foot-long mobile command center is part of the Verizon disaster recovery fleet of vehicles, trailers, mobile communications centers, satellite facilities and other support vehicles.

Featuring four large slide-out sections and 700 square feet of inside workspace, the command center was designed under the guidance of Verizon’s Chief Business Continuity Officer Dick Price, a Hoosier who started his career in public safety more than three decades ago with the Warren Township (Ind.) Fire Department.

The concept of a self-sufficient mobile command center was generated by the company’s experience in the devastating hurricanes of Katrina and Rita, which rocked the Gulf Coast in 2005.

“We were in Louisiana for four months after Hurricane Katrina, repairing our network facilities,” Price said.  “Like any major natural disaster, when a large portion of our communications network infrastructure is damaged or destroyed, we need to be on-site for long periods of time, working with numerous local and state officials and federal agencies as our network teams rebuild the network.  This command center is critical to Verizon’s needs and our customers’ needs in an emergency.”

Inside the Verizon mobile command center are 13 individual work stations with access to voice, data, Internet and video; intercom systems; individual computer panels and TV screens; a large map plotter, printer and fax machine; and a weather station.  The cross-patched audio systems in the command center also can connect to most U.S. domestic emergency radio systems, including the Metropolitan Emergency Communications Agency in Marion County, which provides radio communications to emergency responders in central Indiana.

The command center also has access to a specialized radio network linked directly to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

When Verizon designed the command center, the company not only wanted to meet the needs of its employees and customers, but also the needs of local and state officials and federal agencies responding to disasters.  For example, the rig includes a 48-inch plotter used for printing large wall-sized maps, allowing public agency responders to review large printouts of the impacted region.

“Whatever we can do as a good corporate citizen to share our assets with others while we are working to repair our network infrastructure or working at a major venue like the Super Bowl will result in a win-win for everyone,” Price said.

Price, who graduated from Purdue University and received a Distinguished Technology Alumnus Award, also has been acknowledged for creating the communications industry’s first hazardous materials response team.  The 30-member Verizon hazmat team, known as the Major Emergency Response Incident Team (MERIT), oversees the tactical response to major incidents by coordinating the use of assets and personnel according to National Incident Management System protocols.  Five members of the Verizon MERIT team are in Indianapolis.

And just as the offensive linemen of the Giants and Patriots are dedicated to protecting the “blind side” of their quarterbacks during the championship game, Verizon’s mobile command center and personnel are dedicated to protecting the continuity of operations for Indianapolis, should the need arise.

The BC125AT, 500 channels in 10 banks/50 channels per-bank, the BC125AT includes full VHF and UHF coverage (see the frequency chart below), including Air and Military Air channels, as well as full alpha tagging for all channels. PC programmability makes it simple to quickly program up for events such as air shows, auto racing, boat racing, and more.

Close Call® RF Capture including Do-Not-Disturb makes capturing those unknown frequencies a snap. Plus, Uniden has extended the Do-Not-Disturb functionality to include Priority channels, so annoying interruptions from priority or Close Call checks is a thing of the past.

The BC125AT includes all the feature enhancements you’ve come to expect from Uniden, including Temporary Lockout, CTCSS/DCS decoding, per-channel dropout delay, and complete search features, all in a compact, easy-to-carry chassis. Weather priority and weather alert will also keep you informed as to the latest weather and other hazard as announced by the National Weather Service.

BC125AT Features:

Memory Storage/Programming

• 10 Channel Storage Banks – You can store up to 50 frequencies into each bank for a total of 500 frequencies so you can more easily identify calls.
• PC Programming – you can download information into the scanner and control the scanner via your personal computer.
• CTCSS and DCS Squelch Modes – rapid search for CTCSS/DCS tones/codes used during a transmission. You can identify up to 50 CTCSS tones and 104 DCS codes.
• Direct Access – lets you directly access any channel.
• Text Tagging – you can name each channel, using up to 16 characters per name.
• Memory Backup – keeps the frequencies stored in memory for an extended time if the scanner loses power.
• Key Confirmation Tones – You can turn on/off a tone that sounds when you perform an operation correctly or if you make an error.
• Key Lock – lets you lock the scanner’s keys to help prevent accidental changes to the scanner’s programming.

Close Call

• Close Call RF Capture Technology – you can set the scanner so it detects
  and provides information about nearby radio transmissions
• Close Call Do-Not-Disturb – checks for Close Call activity in between channel reception so active channels are not interrupted.
• Close Call Temporary Store – temporarily stores and scans the last 10 Close Call hits in the ‘Close Call Hits’ system.

Lock-Out Functions

• Lock-Out Function – lets you set your scanner to skip over specified channels or frequencies when scanning or searching.
• Temporary Lockout – makes it easy to temporarily lock out any channel or frequency. The lockout is cleared when you turn power off, then back on so you don’t have to remember to unlock the channels later.

Priority Functions

• Priority Scan with Do Not Disturb – lets you program one channel in each bank (10 in all) and then have the scanner check each channel every 2 seconds while it scans the banks so you don’t miss transmissions on those channels. Do-Not Disturb keeps the scanner from interrupting transmissions during receiving.
• Priority Plus Scan – you can set the scanner so it scans only the priority channels.

Display

• Display Backlight – You can turn on/off the LCD backlight, set it operate on squelch only, keypress only, or both.
• Signal Strength Meter – shows the signal strength for more powerful transmissions.

Antenna/Reception

• Flexible Antenna with BNC Connector – provides adequate reception in strong signal areas and is designed to help prevent antenna breakage. Or, you can connect an external antenna for better reception.
• Triple-Conversion Circuitry – virtually eliminates any interference from IF (intermediate frequency) images, so you hear only the selected frequency.

Service Banks/Searches

• Service Banks – frequencies are preset in 10 separate Police, Fire/Emergency, Ham, Marine, Railroad, Civil Air, Military Air, CB Radio, FRS/GMRS/MURS, and Racing banks to make it easy to locate specific types of calls and search any or all of these banks.
• Custom Search – lets you program up to 10 Custom Search Ranges and search any or all of these ranges.
• Quick Search – allows you to enter a frequency and start searching up or down from that frequency.
• Turbo Search – increases the search speed from 100 to 300 steps per second automatically for bands with 5 kHz steps.
• Search Lockouts – you can lock up to 200 search frequencies: 100 temporary frequencies and 100 permanent frequencies in Custom Search, Service Search, Close Call Search, or Quick Search Modes.
• Scan/Search Delay/Resume – controls whether the scanner pauses at the end of the transmission to wait for a reply. You can set the Delay time for each Channel, Close Call Search, Custom Search, and Service search. You can also set a negative delay where the scanner stops on transmissions for a set time then automatically resumes.

Weather

• Weather Alert Priority – the scanner scans active WX channels every 5 seconds to check for the presence of a 1050 Hz Weather Alert Tone.
• Weather Alert Standby – the scanner allows you to monitor for weather alerts broadcast on NOAA channels.

Power

• Two Power Options – let you power the scanner using the included two AA rechargeable or alkaline batteries or the supplied USB cable.
• Battery Save – works when there is no transmission for 1 minute in Scan Hold Mode and any Search Hold Mode (without Priority Scan). This feature turns off RF power for 1 second and turns on it for 300ms to extend the battery life.
• Battery Low Alert – the icon will blink in the display and a tone warns you every 15 seconds when the battery power gets
• Built-In Charger – allows you to charge Ni-MH batteries in the scanner using a USB port on any computer and the supplied USB cable.

Frequency Coverage:
25-54 MHz
108-174 MHz
225-380 MHz
400-512 MHz

Source: Uniden

In the last restrictor-plate race at Talladega last fall, drivers had a dozen or more other drivers they could talk to and made deals with whom they would draft with in the two-car tandems.

“Matt Kenseth … said anything that NASCAR can do to help us get back to 1 against 42 others, he supports, and I think that’s part of it, whether it be the confusion from the driver’s seat or the being able to cut a deal or whatever it is,” NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director John Darby said.

Some drivers liked being able to use one spotter for two cars because the driver pushing in a two-car draft can’t see much except the car in front.

But driver feedback also indicated that it was distracting.

“There was a point where it got so confusing to them that they actually lost focus on what they were doing and felt much better if we could back that off somewhat and get it to a standard or more common communications between driver and spotter and driver and pit crew as we’ve known it in the past,” Darby said.

Spotters can still listen to multiple radios and know what’s being said by the other driver in the two-car tandem to help deliver information quickly. Crew chiefs also can talk to each other.

“The teams will still work with [each other] inside the rule, whether it’s spotters on the roof, swapping notes back and forth,” Darby said. “There will be plenty of communications going on and the drivers will be almost as aware as they were, I guess.

“But it just seemed like that would be helpful to unclutter the airwaves a little bit if you would and make the communications more point blank and direct to within the team.”

Source: http://nascar.speedtv.com/

The police department will make its $7 million leap forward from analog to encrypted digital transmission of radio conversations in a move city officials insisted was not about secrecy but safety.

“We are not out to avoid detection, but we are here to keep everyone safe,” said Steven Page, Pasadena’s telecommunications supervisor.

Aided by cell phone advances that – in terms of technology – change every few months, criminals are monitoring police activity constantly, Page said.

“With the advent of iPhones and other devices, you can use an (application) to figure out where the police are at any given time,” he said.

Shawn West, who owns West Information Services, a company that monitors radio traffic, said “people listening to scanners aren’t committing that many crimes” and those employing scanners to aid in a criminal activity are themselves breaking the law.

And while police seek privacy in switching to digital transmission of their conversations, doing so will hinder the work of journalists, West said.

“Newspapers will have to wait on press releases,” he said.

Meanwhile, a digital revolution of sorts is underway in law enforcement, with agencies from Pomona to the Pacific Ocean adopting new radio technology.

And as they do, many news agencies will be at least temporarily left in the dark.

Pasadena city officials promised to come up with a plan to arm area media outlets with digitally equipped scanners. Pasadena officials said they will likely replicate the plan used in Orange County, where news outlets and law enforcement agencies enter into agreements to lease or receive the scanners on loan, Page said.

However, the city has not formulated criteria for what constitutes as a news agency.

For now, the Pasadena media will depend on the discretion of police officers in reporting the agency’s activities.

“We will put the information out that the public needs to know,” Pasadena police Phillip Sanchez said.

“That may be one of the unintended consequences,” Pasadena City Manager Michael Beck said about the encryption which will keep residents and the media from listening in on police frequencies.

Sanchez surmises that the public prefers the improved response times associated with the technology to open access for the media and the public.

“I guess the balance to that is the benefit to the victim; that we get there quickly and can coordinate our response,” Sanchez said. “Ultimately time will tell whether the media feels excluded.”

While California requires government bodies to operate openly under the scrutiny of the press and the general public, police departments are not required to make the same concession when it comes to radio transmissions.

“I have never seen an obligation to keep scanner traffic transparent,” said Terry Francke, CalAware attorney and government watchdog.

“Assuming of course that the police are doing what they are supposed to do … I don’t know it’s inherently suspect anymore than it would be for police to use the phone or email to secure communications,” Francke said.

The new digital radio system works much like a cell phone. A computer system assigns a frequency to a radio in the field and switches that frequency assignment as traffic on the entire system increases or as the officer moves across the coverage area. In short, more people can talk along a more narrow spectrum of bandwidth, West said.

By April 1, the Pasadena departments of Public Works, Water and Power and Code Enforcement will have adopted the new encrypted system.

The Pasadena Fire Department will not adopt a fully encrypted system, as the department works closely with other agencies that have not gone digital, Page said.

In the Bay Area, the new radio systems have been crippled by cell phone jamming equipment, proof that the system is not foolproof, Page said.

“If someone really wants to jam our system, they can,” Page said.