Police radio

A radio operator of the Royal Thai Police.
Antenna of the Bavarian State Police, Germany.

Police radio is a communications radio system used by law enforcement agencies all over the world.

Many such systems are encrypted to prevent eavesdroppers from listening in.

Portable radios

The vast majority of economically developed countries police services have access to such equipment; also, in most countries, police cars have sets which are designed to receive calls from the control room, and respond. Also, small personal radios exist that allow each officer to carry one easily, as well as a large central room at the Police station which directs personnel to the location of emergency incidents. Portable police radios first appeared within the British police in 1969.

By country

Norway

In Norway, it is legal for private citizens to listen to the police radio, There are even streams available online.

United Kingdom

It is an offence under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 to listen to police radio in the UK.[1][2] The move from open analogue to the encrypted digital Airwave system in the UK has made it practically impossible to just listen in to police radio.

Due to recent outbreaks of system down times, the Police and Fire services have emergency back-up radio broadcasting on analogue for threats against the main control centre. The Ambulance Service however has mobile phone systems in place until the system has been updated.

United States

U.S. state patrols, county sheriffs' offices, and municipal police departments often run their own systems in parallel, presenting interoperability problems. The FCC assigns licenses to these entities in the public safety (PP and PX) allotments of the spectrum. These include allocations in the lower portion of the VHF spectrum (around 39 - 45 MHz), highly susceptible to "skip" interference but still used by state highway patrols; the VHF "hi-band", from 150 to 160 MHz; and various UHF bands. Many systems still use conventional FM transmissions for most traffic; others are trunked analog or digital systems. Recently, there has been a move towards digital trunked systems, especially those based around the public-safety standard Project 25 format set by the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International. A minority of other police radio systems, the largest examples being the Milwaukee Police Department and Pennsylvania State Police use the incompatible OpenSky format. TETRA, the standard in many European countries as well as other places in the world, is virtually unused in the United States.

Recently, some states have begun to operate statewide radio networks with varying levels of participation from police on the county and city levels. Some of them are:

It is generally not illegal in the United States to listen to unencrypted police communications. However some states prohibit such listening within vehicles.

References

  1. ↑ "Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006". 2014-08-07. Retrieved 2014-08-17.
  2. ↑ "Ofcom - Guidance on Receive-Only Radio Scanners". 2014-08-17. Retrieved 2014-08-17.

See also