Garbled radio call delayed RCMP response to Parliament Hill attacker: report

[Jay911]

Garbled radio call delayed RCMP response to Parliament Hill attacker: report | CTV Montreal News

A garbled police radio transmission failed to immediately alert RCMP officers that an armed Michael Zehaf Bibeau was storming Parliament Hill on Oct. 22, 2014, an Ontario Provincial Police report has found.
A woman with a baby carriage first alerted a female RCMP officer on the Hill about a man with a gun, RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud told a news conference Wednesday.
As the terrified woman attempted to seek shelter in the back of the officer’s cruiser, the officer tried to radio others about Zehaf Bibeau, who had forced his way inside a ministerial limo and was driving towards Centre Block.
However, the officer’s radio message came out “garbled” and no one understood what she was saying, Michaud said.

Hmm. Mountie in the NCR couldn't be heard by colleagues because her transmission was garbled, you say...

 

[SCPD]

Garbled radio call delayed RCMP response to Parliament Hill attacker: report | CTV Montreal News



Hmm. Mountie in the NCR couldn't be heard by colleagues because her transmission was garbled, you say...

Gee I wonder what the "garble" was.... ha

 

[W8RMH]

Normally when one does not understand what another has said they ask them to repeat it, or if your message is not acknowledged you repeat it. This is about radio operation procedure not the radios them selves.

 

[uncleblackie]

Normally when one does not understand what another has said they ask them to repeat it, or if your message is not acknowledged you repeat it. This is about radio operation procedure not the radios them selves.

Yes, exactly.

Something about the way this is being reported doesn't sound right.

This sounds like the RCMP making lame excuses for not acting promptly.

911 calls are released to the public all the time. I'm sure this was recorded as well, so how about
releasing this so called garbled recording to the public???

 

[Jay911]

Sometimes you only have one chance to make a transmission. This video points that out in spades (ignore the description, it's not an F16 at Tyndall) - a CT-155 eats a bird on takeoff, and the crew tries in vain to relight the damaged engine. Just before they punch out, the PIC says on the radio "We're ejecting to the north, we have an engine failure". After he's left the airplane, the controller replies, "Copy you're breaking out to the north?" in a questioning tone. "Breaking out" is not slang for "ejecting" and wouldn't be used on the radio even if it was. The controller didn't know what the pilot said and there was no chance for the pilot to clarify.

Back to my original assertion in post #1: I expect to be given grief for my stance, but I am raising the point that digital modulation and/or encryption in radio comms has the potential to cause critical messages to be unreadable if the system isn't built out right. We all have heard "you went digital" when a user of a system becomes unreadable due to some kind of problem with either the transmitting or receiving party. Yes, we all know that in an ideal setting where the system is properly built to have no coverage gaps or holes, no frames would be lost and all voice would be crystal clear. But that isn't how it plays out in real life.

I would be interested in hearing the recording myself to determine why the RCMP member's transmission was unintelligible. It could have been because she was yelling and/or stumbling over her words, for all I know. But I have a suspicion that the radio system design might have a part to play in this.

 

[mmisk]

JAY911 I agree with you, the slightest noise on a digital transmission and it becomes unreadable.

On an analog NBFM signal, the human ear can still make out what is being said if the signal is noisy.
It is an amazing ability for the human ear to allow you to listen to one conversation in a noisy room with everyone talking at once. Another good example is when listening to an orchestra, one can listen to a single instrument even with everyone playing at once.

Digital communications are fine for commercial use where the messages are not critical.
Digital voice for emergency communications?...it will be a second rate system.

 

[CM1]

Since the article states "radio call" I think we can only assume at this time it had to do with transmission/reception on the radio. I'd like to hear "the tape" on this one.

 

[mikepdx]

I've heard garbled CB, marine, SSB, P25, EDACS, SmartZone, DMR - et al.

Radio is not infallible.
Radio is not 100% coverage.
It probably never will be.

You can easily step into a radio shadow
or several other poor propagation phenomena
while traversing the concrete canyons of our big cities.

If that poor transmission coincides with a yell for help,
that is obviously a big problem.

 

[mmisk]

Hello MIKEPDX,

I must agree with you. Those are very good points.

I was listening to the comms that day and there was a lot of confusion, but it seemed to be mostly to do with not being sure how many attackers were involved. So it was a difficult situation for our public safety agency's.

 

[N0VGL]

Here where I work we use digital HTs to a base unit in the control rooms. If there is too much background noise or if guys are in certain areas of the plant it sounds like they are broadcasting from under water.

 

[robertmac]

I have been scanning for a number of years and have heard complaints about most radio systems that were used by police and fire in Calgary. As Jay911 has said, a lot depends on how well the systems are built up. And Jay911 will know this better than me, but when listening on a scanner to the systems in use in Calgary, I have heard few garbled radio transmissions from the fire department. There signals are usually clear and strong [there have been some problems as they do use on board repeaters]. EMS is very low volume. Police volume varies but there are an awful lot of digital garbled calls where nothing can be heard. There are times I have heard the transmission on the scanner, but the units have not. Thus there seems to be more problems with the digital system than analog. I guess I am naive, but I would have thought that the area around the Parliament Buildings would have had good coverage. But with electronics and radio transmissions, there are a lot of things that impact how these systems work. These are my observations only on the systems utilized by Fire, EMS and Police in Calgary.

 

[w4amp]

Industry Canada has only had one enforcement case since it took over from the DOC 20 years ago. It was a teenager in Ontario with a high powered FM broadcast transmitter. They have not investigated any jamming on Amateur radio or on public safety frequencies. Absolutely no incentive to do your job in a fully socialist society. If the transmission was in fact jammed, no one would know or care.

 

[exkalibur]

That's a pretty bold statement, which I know to be absolutely false.

 

[mikewazowski]

I think that statement needs to be qualified.

We've work with IC investigating interference issues on a regular basis.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Industry Canada has only had one enforcement case since it took over from the DOC 20 years ago. It was a teenager in Ontario with a high powered FM broadcast transmitter. They have not investigated any jamming on Amateur radio or on public safety frequencies. Absolutely no incentive to do your job in a fully socialist society. If the transmission was in fact jammed, no one would know or care.

I know a fellow that regularly engages IC to resolve interference complaints... So where do you get your facts from?

 

[EJB]

Industry Canada has only had one enforcement case since it took over from the DOC 20 years ago. It was a teenager in Ontario with a high powered FM broadcast transmitter. They have not investigated any jamming on Amateur radio or on public safety frequencies. Absolutely no incentive to do your job in a fully socialist society. If the transmission was in fact jammed, no one would know or care.

I am not sure where you are getting your facts, I know of a person who is very active in dealing with jamming and with various broadcasting issues. He won a worldwide award for the job he did in fact. He is a member of this site, he can jump in here if he chooses to.

Why would anyone bring in politics to this issue? Read Tony Judz's "Post War-A history of Europe Since 1945," and you are going to see that plenty of the nations that got swallowed up by mother Russia, there was plenty of people, groups, etc that participated in jamming, or surveillance. There was this thing that the regimes were good at in this time, fear and terror and but they did a great deal of jamming, interfering with radio signals.

Canada has never had a socialist society, heck, a conservative govt has been in power since 2006 is certainly not socialistic in any way. Not sure if the member who posted this knows anything about Canada, we tend to be off the American radar unless a comedian or musician breaks thru or when a deranged individual does a terrorism crime.

The person that was jamming some frequencies, wasn't he a teenager with a great deal of mental health issues and who was aiming to stick it to the man so to speak by broadcasting pop and dance music in the Ottawa area? The kids father was quite wealthy and well-known in the National Capital area and had to spend a good deal of $ with lawyers and fines. Not sure if he was a socialist, a Fascist or Democrat, probably just a teen whom needed help with mental health, kinda common for a teenager to do that.

 

[mciupa]

Garbled radio call delayed RCMP response to Parliament Hill attacker: report | CTV Montreal News



Hmm. Mountie in the NCR couldn't be heard by colleagues because her transmission was garbled, you say...

Garbled English? ... or garbled French?

Are all officers assigned to that area bilingual?

Perhaps the female officers voice pitch was hard to listen to due to the panic situation.

 

[pkneeyahx]

The person that was jamming some frequencies, wasn't he a teenager with a great deal of mental health issues and who was aiming to stick it to the man so to speak by broadcasting pop and dance music in the Ottawa area? The kids father was quite wealthy and well-known in the National Capital area and had to spend a good deal of $ with lawyers and fines. Not sure if he was a socialist, a Fascist or Democrat, probably just a teen whom needed help with mental health, kinda common for a teenager to do that.

Mix FM (Ottawa) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[uncleblackie]

Well everyone can speculate all they want but until the recording is actually released, the RCMP have no credibility IMO.

It's pretty easy to use that as an excuse and no one seems to be pressing them to substantiate it.
You would think they would want to release the recording to vindicate themselves.

 

[w4amp]

I see a lot of posters saying my post is unqualified, but not a single bit of evidence to disprove it. Any poster that has ANY record of radio enforcement action by Industry Canada since they took over from the DOC in 1993 post the link in this thread. I already mentioned the teen FM pirate in Ontario some years back.

Prove me wrong. I'll wait.