[Scan-DC] Phoenix to shield police radio traffic

[Rick Hansen]

Does anyone know if making commercial use of what you hear is still a crime? When I was young the tow truck drivers would get busted and fined for making commercial use of what they heard!

This comes down to lax enforcement and stupid news crews. And guess what, in many cases the media who caused the problem will be given radios later. Sigh...



Sent from my iPad

On Mar 15, 2013, at 1:57 AM, "Alan Henney" <alan at henney.com> wrote:

> 
> The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)
> 
> March 8, 2013 Friday 
> Final Chaser Edition
> 
> Phoenix to shield police radio traffic
> 
> BYLINE: By, JJ Hensley, The Arizona Republic
> 
> SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
> 
> LENGTH: 1129 words
> 
> When Mike Ormandy was growing up in Indiana in the 1970s, it was not uncommon for the adults to gather at a home on a weekend evening to play cards and have a few drinks with an odd soundtrack in the background: police-scanner traffic.
> 
> The sounds of static and police-radio transmissions infected Ormandy with the scanner bug, and he brought it with him to Arizona, where he invested in high-powered antennas and radios to capture the sounds of emergency responders communicating in the field.
> 
> The proliferation of websites and smartphone applications that stream police-radio traffic to hundreds of thousands of users, and a handful of recent instances in which scanner listeners have beaten police to crime scenes, are threatening what Ormandy and others view as a hobby - one that is as much about public safety as it is about infotainment.
> 
> "It's kind of nice for safety reasons to know when there's something major going on. ... I think it keeps officers honest, and I really think the public listening allows them to have a respect for the kind of danger these guys face every day," Ormandy said. 
> 
> "Police want you to share what you see and not get involved. That's where the smartphone users get it wrong. From what I've found, the biggest culprit is people listening on smartphones and hearing something big going on and running out to the scene."
> 
> Phoenix police last month decided to encrypt emergency police-radio traffic related to crimes in progress, a move that will reduce by about 18 percent the agency's scanner traffic audible to the public, said Sgt. Trent Crump, a department spokesman.
> 
> The decision for Phoenix to encrypt more dispatch calls and conversations between officers comes after recent incidents:
> 
> About an hour after a Jan. 30 office shooting in central Phoenix, police broadcast over their radios the address of a possible suspect's home.
> 
> The information was picked up by media outlets and others monitoring scanners, and some posted the address on social-media sites. Media crews and others arrived at the home before police tactical teams could get there, Crump said, setting up to wait for the shooter, Arthur Harmon.
> 
> Police believe media coverage of his home may have caused Harmon to flee as he was on his way there, spurring a manhunt that ended the following morning when he was discovered dead in a Mesa parking lot. However, evidence found in Harmon's rental car, including cash, hygiene products and clothes, could indicate that he had intended to go on the run after his carefully planned murders.
> 
> On Feb. 8, police responded to a home-invasion call in west Phoenix where the suspects turned out to be juveniles, including a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot by the homeowner. Police broadcast information about the suspects, including the school they attended, over their radios, prompting some media members to go to the school and attempt to interview students and staff even before investigators had arrived, Crump said.
> 
> On Feb. 11, police broadcast information about tactical positions and response plans as they closed in on a man suspected of robbing more than a dozen pharmacies and grocery stores, potentially jeopardizing their ability to capture the "Calligraphy Bandit," Crump said. Tomas Garcia-Mancinas was arrested without incident. That day, police administrators made the decision to move more calls to encrypted channels, Crump said.
> 
> The California manhunt for fugitive ex-police officer Christopher Dorner brought the issue into sharp focus nationally on Feb. 12, after police were reportedly heard on radios discussing plans to burn the cabin Dorner was hiding in. A California sheriff later denied that the fire was intentionally set and said police used pyrotechnic tear gas called "burners" in an attempt to flush Dorner from the cabin.
>