A deff good topic , im sure has been debated to death .
However Im a former Police Services Board Member from a small town.
I no longer sit on the board nor live in the sane town.
In 1990 we had a fast talking Motorola salesman cold call us...he left fancy brochures and stuff.
Now this stuff is passed on from the Chief to the board for review.
We then in turn, debate this and send our findings to City Council.
Our Chief wanted to go 100% Digital , which was a Spectrum W9..an over lay on a vhf Freqency thus turning the clear comms into white noise.
He came to our meeting armed with what he termed “ Military Grade Communications )
Now most know, that is simply not true , we all had a chuckle , seeing as there was a few Hams on the board .
We stressed by ‘ cloakin ‘ our Police Radio Traffic we will cut off the ears n eyes out there , we went on to say ‘ There is more Monitors than Police Officers , this move is too costly to buy and moreover to maintain “ The Chief was LEVITT !!
He wanted total deafness , when asked “ Was there any incident we should know of that a scanner was used in the commission of any offence...his reply , a sheepish “ No “ .
Monies denied!
We did the next year allow for 4 hand helds to be used in DVP Mode for our Drug Unit. , sadly they were not used as much as our Military Grade Chief said they would be , they were sold 2 yrs later.
I saw a post on here , as per “ Encryption Money “ let me say from expense point of view , this stuff is NOT cheap to maintain !
If the tax base only knew just how much , as an example...our nice DVP Handhelds lost the key if the batt ran down , costing us more monies...did our Drug arrests go up because of this new radio ?
No it didn’t...not 1 % , if anything we had the same number of arrests when the drug unit was in clear mode.
Monies for these systems are not garnished overnight , that is monies budgeted at least 2 years ago in any city.
On a final note , we do touch base with other Police Boards , Welland Ontario is one.
One board member said he was told of Organ music playing over the Police Radios....how odd , that the SAME salesman who cold called us , cold called them in a matter of 2 days.
They sadly bought into the ‘ SCARE “ Tactics employed by ANY radio company , I wish I had a mp3 file of the scare tactics used on us back then...again if it wasnt for a few hams on the board , Im sure we would have spent the 19 Million on that radio system for 12 cops in our Dept.
In my final year I put together a costing working group to see if the OPP could provide the same service , only cheaper...3 years later , we are OPP and proud..and the tax payers pockets are a bit heavier , to the tune of 700,000 our 1st yr...and 1.2 Million years 2 and 3.
We also believe strongly in cloaking the signals from the bad guys , however in our case , no data was ever produced by our ‘ Angry Chief ‘ to back that up...again , Monies DENIED.
Now we are OPP , and that Chief is working a desk in XXXX Ontario.