[Scan-DC] Lojak / Interops

[oldsdoug at hotmail.com]

On the way home from work awhile ago, had the BC396 with me and was routinely scanning the Montgomery County Police Rockville talkgroup (among other things).  I think I heard something, maybe on the Auto Theft Team talkgroup, about LoJack and somebody having or not having a LoJack receiver, but didn't really pay any attention to it.  Maybe 5 or 10 mins after that, heard what turned out to be the Rockville dispatcher saying something about a Howard County helicopter that was following a car up River Road.  (?!)  Then (immediately!) the Howard 'copter came up on the Rockville talkgroup and told the dispatcher that he was following a vehicle westbound on River Road at Bradley Boulevard (he actually said Route 190 at Route 191), and asking if he was "on the right channel".  (I don't know where the line is between Rockville and Bethesda, but) the dispatcher told the 'copter to stay on that talkgroup.  Seems to me then that an MC Rockville car asked if this was a pursuit, and somebody, either the Howard 'copter (I never did catch its callsign, thought he may have just said Howard Air) or the R'ville dispatcher, said no, they had merely gotten a LoJack hit on it and the guy was apparently unaware that he was being followed.

As you can imagine, at this point I was getting interested!  The 'copter continued to follow the car, and MC police units (think they were all Rockville cars) were chiming in with their locations.  The suspect vehicle turned into the Giant parking lot at River and Falls (Route 189) and the driver got out, apparently still unaware of what was going on... meanwhile the copter is reporting that he has a news helicopter above him (!), the driver is in front of the hardware store, and the the county cop cars are all pulling into the parking lot.  Then one of them called out that they had a suspect in custody.

By that time I had reached my own destination (nowhere near where this was happening) so I quit listening - pretty cool though!

Dang, I just realized, I had a second scanner, a BC350, in the truck with me, and one of the frequencies it usually scans is the local helicopter Unicom frequency... I bet that would have been interesting too... but I snagged the power cord of that radio with my foot yesterday morning and pulled the lighter plug off of it when I got out of the truck, so the BC350 is temporarily 10-7... OTOH if I hadn't done that yesterday, I probably wouldn't have had the 396 with me!

KMA-367, 1800

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