You Can't Outrun a Motorola

 Following in line with a brief history of police technology available today, I'd like to take a minute to talk about what many call the police officer's lifeline, the portable radio. For years one of the most essential pieces of equipment to have on them at all times is a freshly charged portable radio battery. The idea is if you get into trouble and we (fellow officers) don't know where you are, we can't come to help you.

 Prior to the invention of the portable radio, police officers used call boxes to communicate with their headquarters for an assignment. Lights were placed all over the city at major intersections and if you were assigned to that area of the city and a light was on, it meant for you to go to a call box and call into the station

 In the late 1920s in Detroit the first radio unit was placed into a police vehicle. The problem with this radio was that it was a one way radio meaning the department could dispatch the call to the officer, but the officer could not answer the dispatcher without driving to a call box.

 In 1933 the first two way radio was used in a police car in Bayonne, New Jersey. Finally this allowed for dispatchers to dispatch a unit to a particular call for service and the responding officer could notify the dispatcher that they received the assignment. This paved the way for today's modern mobile radio.

 Today the technology of portable and mobile radios inside the police cars have come leaps and bounds from their 1920 introduction. Your typical police radio today is programmed on a digital frequency to allow for clarity and allows for inter-agency communication. This is critical to the apprehension of suspects if someone flees into a neighboring city or town. Prior to this technology radios were only able to be programed for the specific department that ordered them. Now with the turn of the channel dial on the radio an officer from Town A can immediately start talking with Town B on their channel keeping them abreast of whatever situation needed their attention.

 In addition to the inter-agency communication, many radios are setup with a private call feature, similar to that of the Nextel Direct Connect technology, where each radio is assigned a private call number. An officer must simply know the private call number of their coworkers and they can talk person to person without having the transmission broadcast over the entire frequency. This assists in eliminating unnecessary radio traffic on the main dispatch channel, and also aids in officer safety in high risk situations. For instance when serving an arrest warrant, instead of communicating the operation on one of the main dispatch frequencies which can be heard by anyone with a police scanner, the officers can use the private call function and talk direct to one another without anyone with a scanner being able to hear, particularly the suspect.

 To further the point in officer safety, radios are now equipped with an "emergency button", usually a red or orange button mounted at the top of the radio for an officer to depress when they are in a life threatening emergency and cannot transmit with their voice. An example would be if an officer calls the station to let them know they are on a traffic stop at a particular intersection and the officer gets into a struggle with the operator, the officer must simply depress the button to alert dispatch they are in an emergency. The dispatcher would then know the last known location of the officer and after several attempts to raise the officer, send multiple units to assist the officer in the fight.

 As you can see radios have not only made the job of a police officer easier in being able to receive and answer calls more efficiently, but the advancement in technology has also provided tools to keep the officer safe.


NOTE: Credit the following Irvine California Police 911 website link for assisting with the history of the mobile radio.

http://www.ci.irvine.ca.us/ipd/divisions/dispatch/911_dispatch.asp