New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner

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Mark649

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I was just wondering how the NYC Medical Examiner Vans are dispatched Is it possible to listen to them on a scanner . Im mainly interested in Manhattan. If any knows a frequency or if its even possible please let me know

Many thanks and Happy New Year to all
 

Scanner-geek

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I could be wrong on this one, but I don't think the ME is dispatched over the air.

I have monitored the DOITT system with OCME talkgroups for years and have never heard any traffic regarding the ME being notified of a crime scene, DOA, AI job, etc. The only thing I have ever heard is what sounds like routine security checks, etc. Quite boring really. I've begun locking it out as it can be annoying.

I assume the interesting assignments are made by phone, Nextel, or some other method.

I would be interested to hear if anyone else has ever heard any comms regarding ME jobs on either of these TGs.

Sorry, Mark.

Cheers,
Scannerd
 

FireBuff44

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I could be wrong on this one, but I don't think the ME is dispatched over the air.

I have monitored the DOITT system with OCME talkgroups for years and have never heard any traffic regarding the ME being notified of a crime scene, DOA, AI job, etc. The only thing I have ever heard is what sounds like routine security checks, etc. Quite boring really. I've begun locking it out as it can be annoying.

I assume the interesting assignments are made by phone, Nextel, or some other method.

I would be interested to hear if anyone else has ever heard any comms regarding ME jobs on either of these TGs.

Sorry, Mark.

Cheers,
Scannerd

i agree 100%. when i used to monitor doitt routinely i always had those talkgroups scanning and all I ever heard was what I believe to be OCME security guards calling from post to post regarding standard security guard operations. they probably dispatch the ME vans via cell phone.
 

nycpress

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I believe I heard them giving a fatality count during the Cory Lidle plane crash incident in 2006 on one of the TGs, but that's all. I've never seen their field units do any radioing...they don't carry portables, anyway. They mostly come from a central location, do the pickup, and leave. Not really "radio dispatched" field units on patrol.
 

wfiedelman

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I'm not sure whether today's OCME lay investigators are radio dispatched to the scenes of death in NYC. They probably use cell phones, as someone suggested. Here's some historical perspective. I was a physician Medical Investigator for the OCME from 1966 to 1979. During those years, Medical Investigators either used their own vehicles or begged/borrowed a NYC Department of Health car to respond to scenes of death -- a driver was provided. There were no OCME "Investigations" vehicles back then. The DOH cars were equipped with GE VHF-low band radios (about 39 mHz, based on the whip antenna length) to reach "Hospital Base." In Manhattan, Hospital Base was at Bellevue, and it was used mainly to direct "morgue wagons" to the scenes of death to pick up bodies for transport to the OCME morgue at 520 First Avenue after the Medical Investigator conducted his scene investigation. There was no radio in the OCME office to dispatch Medical Investigators to the scenes of death, and we were totally dependent on Bell System pay telephones on the street (there were no cell phones back then). For anyone old enough to remember, many of these street pay phones did not work for various reasons (mainly vandalism). After much pleading, I convinced the CME at that time to have installed a radio console in the clerks' office at 520 First Avenue, so Medical Investigators using DOH cars could be dispatched by radio to investigate scenes of death. The console was connected to Hospital Base at Bellevue by a landline. The system worked well for about one month and saved hours of unecessary travel up and down Manhattan. After the first month, the OCME clerks refused to use the radio to dispatch Medical Investigators, claiming that they (the clerks) were not radio operators and were not paid to use this equipment. So, we went back to the old telephone system, and the radio console sat unused until I left the OCME.
 

haleve

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NYC OCME

I'm not sure whether today's OCME lay investigators are radio dispatched to the scenes of death in NYC. They probably use cell phones, as someone suggested. Here's some historical perspective. I was a physician Medical Investigator for the OCME from 1966 to 1979. During those years, Medical Investigators either used their own vehicles or begged/borrowed a NYC Department of Health car to respond to scenes of death -- a driver was provided. There were no OCME "Investigations" vehicles back then. The DOH cars were equipped with GE VHF-low band radios (about 39 mHz, based on the whip antenna length) to reach "Hospital Base." In Manhattan, Hospital Base was at Bellevue, and it was used mainly to direct "morgue wagons" to the scenes of death to pick up bodies for transport to the OCME morgue at 520 First Avenue after the Medical Investigator conducted his scene investigation. There was no radio in the OCME office to dispatch Medical Investigators to the scenes of death, and we were totally dependent on Bell System pay telephones on the street (there were no cell phones back then). For anyone old enough to remember, many of these street pay phones did not work for various reasons (mainly vandalism). After much pleading, I convinced the CME at that time to have installed a radio console in the clerks' office at 520 First Avenue, so Medical Investigators using DOH cars could be dispatched by radio to investigate scenes of death. The console was connected to Hospital Base at Bellevue by a landline. The system worked well for about one month and saved hours of unecessary travel up and down Manhattan. After the first month, the OCME clerks refused to use the radio to dispatch Medical Investigators, claiming that they (the clerks) were not radio operators and were not paid to use this equipment. So, we went back to the old telephone system, and the radio console sat unused until I left the OCME.

Greetings & welcome to RR, if my rapidly failing memory serves me right a very long time ago I believe the original morgue vans were gray & blue & were actually dispatched by the original NYC H&H dispatchers on 47.66 Mhz along with interfacility transport buses as we Noo Yawkas called ambulances, the regular buses were dispatched on 155.16 & 155.22 for Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn & Queens, I never knew if Staten Island (Called Richmond back then) was covered by H&H, also NYPD Brooklyn & Queens divisions were dispatched on 150/151 MHz forestry frequencies, this was long before the advent of 911 & the infamous UHF band KOP911 callsign when NYPD transitioned to UHF, also the original emergency phone number was 440-1234, again, welcome to RR.

BTW: Check this rather interesting site out when you get a chance.

Los Angeles County Medical-Examiner Coroner - Skeletons in the Closet
 

wfiedelman

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Yes you're right. I predate KOP911. I remember when the NYPD Brooklyn West/Richmond frequency was in the 39 mHz range in the 1950s with the call sign KEA745. Brooklyn East was KEA744. The ambulances transmitted on the same frequencies as the NYPD and used the same dispatchers (all male and all POs). The KOP911 call sign was assigned when NYPD in Brooklyn/Richmond transitioned to VHF-high. I recall this clearly because I had to buy a new receiver (no scanners back then -- crystal-controlled). This is off topic -- OCME communications were primitive back then, but Dr. Milton Helpern, the CME, was a giant.
 

902

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Thank you for the history!!!!!

That gave me a few leads. The link below is from 1969 and shows some of the 39 MHz NYPD systems remaining, although most had already transitioned to VHF high band simplex. Many of those frequencies were refarmed by NJ after the move to T-Band in the mid 70s. When I came into the hobby as a kid, I can remember tuning around and hearing NYPD on VHF high band. The Bronx came in the best and I would hear the 44 and 48 precincts very well, then a few years later messing with the TV on Channel 14 and hearing them there.

Check out page 93.

When I worked for the City in the mid-80s, HHC was still using 47.66 MHz for Mortuary, Transfer, and "PETS" buses (psychiatric transfer). It was also intended to be a disaster radio system, if I recall. The ER at Metropolitan Hospital had a desktop GE set up on it. Somewhere, one of my social media friends and former co-workers posted a pre-Maspeth photo of the ambulance radio room. That was before any of the green uniforms.

The only other agency I remember using low band was MTA transit buses. I remember seeing the bus garage on the West Side with two yagis, I guess going up and down the length of Manhattan.
 

wfiedelman

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If you go to this URL, you can see the call signs for the NYPD radio system pre-KOP911: Spring 3100, Volume 21, Page 480 | Document Viewer. I believe that the transition to 470-476 mHz from VHF-high occurred in 1969 and not earlier, so I stand corrected (see my previous posting above). What is so remarkable is that -- for purposes of precinct radio assignments pre-KOP911 -- Manhattan was divided into North and South precincts and Brooklyn into East and West (the latter included Richmond); Bronx and Queens were two separate radio zones. That translated to at least 10 precincts per frequency plus ESU plus ambulances, yet there were often prolonged transmission silences. Today there are 2 or 3 precincts per frequency, no ESU (they are on the SOD frequency) or ambulances (they are on the EMS frequencies), and the precinct zone transmissions are almost continuous.

Yes, there were a number of DOH services on 47.66 mHz, including one called "MERV." Hospital Base would contact MERV every now and then -- I couldn't decipher the acronym, although now know that it means Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle. Anecdotally, after the OCME clerks stopped using the radio console to dispatch Medical Investigators to scenes of death, we (my driver and I) were responding to a call in northern Manhattan travelling up the FDR Drive when a dog ran out into the roadway and was struck by the car ahead of us. We were in a radio-equipped DOH vehicle, so I called Hospital Base and asked the dispatcher to notify NYPD. The dispatcher had no idea who "ME-2" was. We kept going (the poor dog was DOA), but I assume that the Hospital Base dispatcher notified NYPD.
 

haleve

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Da Olde Dayz In Noo Yawk

POLICE NY Home page POLICENY old NYPD

More to come but I must extend my stay here in Pompano since Long Island is reported to be receiving major snowflakes, about 18" to 24" sayz the news, can anybody confirm that?

BTW: I believe it was MABSTOA that was on low band back then, I can't remember when MTA took over their operations though, two of New York's largest private ambulance services: Holmes Ambulance (Bklyn) & AA Ambulance (Da Bronix) shared a channel on 47.42 MHz, CRB out of Syosset had a comprehensive listing of low band stuff in the Big Apple including the NYC Sewer Dept. on 48.02 MHz which I never not once heard of the infamous discarded alligators being reported if anybody remembers those rumors.
 

902

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Dr. Fiedelman, wasn't 1969 the migration from low band to VHF high band? I didn't think the T-band spectrum was cleared until the early-to-mid 70s. I remember listening to SOD still on high band around 1977. "Firecom" and "Betty Bearcat" used to send out a frequency list around then with all of the VHF precinct frequencies. Wish I still had that stuff. It wasn't until a few years later that many of the surrounding towns took up the VHF high band frequencies. I believe NJ took many of them, including Fort Lee, Teaneck, Ridgefield, etc. Unfortunately, thanks to politics, the T-band system is currently part of a giveback requirement written by Congress and signed by the President. Unless the climate in D.C. changes, the current scheme of communications stands to change. Exactly how is unknown, although the migration to 700 MHz broadband using LTE will likely be a part of it. And, that might change.

I was always taught MERV stood for Mobile Emergency Room Vehicle, at least that's what we referred to it as in EMS. I got to visit the OCME twice aside from the 10-83s that we had to remove and transport - once as a field trip in the EMS academy, where we viewed autopsies and paid a trip to the museum collection there (amazing, amazing history), and then several times again, more as A&P in practice, with my paramedic class (Bellevue). These trips tended to always put things into perspective for us.

When I got on the job in the early 80s working out of Cumberland, we only had 6 channel 477/478 MHz Micor mobile radios with MODAT status/message control heads. No portables. Actually, there were - Repco/RCA portables that we could never get (and probably didn't want). We were allowed to go out to the precinct house our PARs were in to sign out an HT220 radio. They were well-made bricks! It worked well until someone took a radio home instead of stopping to bring it back and the precinct was stuck accounting for it. Then the sergeant wouldn't allow us to sign one out anymore. Soon after I had transferred to Bellevue, we got MX portables with EMS-only, then eventually we got synthesized MX portables with the NYPD zones in them. PD's system worked much better than ours did and it was good to know when someone was calling a 13. "EMS to central, we got the 13, K"

Just thinking, I hope the hospital called NYC police rather than HHC police.

If you go to this URL, you can see the call signs for the NYPD radio system pre-KOP911: Spring 3100, Volume 21, Page 480 | Document Viewer. I believe that the transition to 470-476 mHz from VHF-high occurred in 1969 and not earlier, so I stand corrected (see my previous posting above). What is so remarkable is that -- for purposes of precinct radio assignments pre-KOP911 -- Manhattan was divided into North and South precincts and Brooklyn into East and West (the latter included Richmond); Bronx and Queens were two separate radio zones. That translated to at least 10 precincts per frequency plus ESU plus ambulances, yet there were often prolonged transmission silences. Today there are 2 or 3 precincts per frequency, no ESU (they are on the SOD frequency) or ambulances (they are on the EMS frequencies), and the precinct zone transmissions are almost continuous.

Yes, there were a number of DOH services on 47.66 mHz, including one called "MERV." Hospital Base would contact MERV every now and then -- I couldn't decipher the acronym, although now know that it means Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle. Anecdotally, after the OCME clerks stopped using the radio console to dispatch Medical Investigators to scenes of death, we (my driver and I) were responding to a call in northern Manhattan travelling up the FDR Drive when a dog ran out into the roadway and was struck by the car ahead of us. We were in a radio-equipped DOH vehicle, so I called Hospital Base and asked the dispatcher to notify NYPD. The dispatcher had no idea who "ME-2" was. We kept going (the poor dog was DOA), but I assume that the Hospital Base dispatcher notified NYPD.
 

wfiedelman

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I'm 99% sure that NYPD began transitioning to UHF in 1969. The process may have been rolled out over a number of years, which could explain why the SOD switch-over occurred later. The reason I'm so sure is that my pharmacist in Brooklyn was a Captain in the NYPD Auxiliary Police, and he had a Motorola base station radio in his pharmacy (the same radio that desk sergeants had in precincts at that time). His Motorola radio in the late 1950s accepted VHF-low crystals. The transition to VHF-high occurred in the '60s (I don't recall the exact year) -- at that time he got a new Motorola radio that accepted VHF-high crystals and ordered one for me. I brought the radio to the ER at Brookdale Hospital in 1965 to get a heads-up on emergencies when I was an intern there. It was July or August 1969 when my Motorola VHF-high radio stopped receiving transmissions on Brooklyn East and Brooklyn West/Richmond frequencies (KEA744 and 745, respectively), and that's when NYPD Brooklyn transitioned to UHF. I don't know when the other boros transitioned.

MERV may have been the acronym for Mobile Emergency Room Vehicle back then, but it currently stands for Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle. I saw a MERV recently on Randall's Island, and it is an FDNY truck based on the lettering on the side, which said "Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle."

Back to OCME -- the museum was maintained by Dr. Helpern and his wife, Bea. When Dr. Helpern reached the "mandatory" retirement age of 65, he was literally booted from 520 First Avenue. He asked for a small office to continue his forensic studies and maintain the museum, but his request was denied. Some of this was political (not a subject for posting on this site). Subsequently, the museum was off limits to almost everyone, and it is my understanding that it no longer exists.
 

902

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Back to OCME -- the museum was maintained by Dr. Helpern and his wife, Bea. When Dr. Helpern reached the "mandatory" retirement age of 65, he was literally booted from 520 First Avenue. He asked for a small office to continue his forensic studies and maintain the museum, but his request was denied. Some of this was political (not a subject for posting on this site). Subsequently, the museum was off limits to almost everyone, and it is my understanding that it no longer exists.
Thank you so much! I searched for Dr. Helpern and found a 1972 article on him, his wife, and the museum, as well as some of his accomplishments to introduce scientific methods to forensic pathology. What a shame that's not there anymore. I hope that a university or medical school somewhere was able to receive the contents and allow them to tell the story of murder and death in New York City. One of the things that struck me on my very quick tour was a particular black and white television set, the model I can recall from childhood. Thinking back, I suppose this was before the days of indexing neutral and hot in AC power, and where the chassis of the TV was "hot." One of those "Hmmmm..." moments.

I went into several databases to search for the call signs and couldn't find them anymore. It will take time, but I'm going to dig through some of the Police Call volume 1 books to see if I can find them in original reference. Back in the early 80s, I had a microfiche collection of radio call signs and frequency data, but they never made the move from NJ to the Midwest with us.

Thank you again!
 

danieldad

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OCME....., just a little sidebar

You guys have really got me thinking about my days on the job, mostly out of 21 (Lincoln), 22 (Boston Outpost), & then my time flying a desk, -and floating out in a PRU grabbing some ot as a tact unit in the 18 & 19 (Harlem hospital sta., & Washington heights, respectively). In '87 or '88, EMS started their trial of 800 radios in Manhattan north. We'd have our usual 477-480 mhz portables (yeah, those mx 340s...better than my Kel light in a 13), & we'd get one 800 mhz portable, as Lincoln covered the northern most areas of Manhattan (19 units), & we're dispatched by Maspeth on 800. Well, almost every tour, we'd end up swinging by the garage at 18 to get more batteries, or to swap out radios til we got one that worked. I remember being on an OD on the 7th floor of one of the projects, -tubed the guy, & wife thought we were trying to kill him (she thought the scope was a knife we were pushing down his throat! ). In trying to call a 10-13, -I ended up leaning waaay outa the window, trying to raise the Board for help. They thought we were calling a '90, & basically put us 99....Ended up getting a desk Sgt at the 43 on our trusty old UHF mx, -who relayed to Housing pd.
- yeah, the guy woke up after loads of narcan, signed off rma, & wife went to jail. We, in turn, headed down to 18, tossed that 800 radio at the Lt., & proceeded to each receive around 20+ stitches from a PA in the er, -courtesy of the rma's wife. Never took an 800 radio again.
.....is it PTSD ? - but I still hear those modat signals in my sleep....
[Mod. Sorry for getting sidetracked]
 
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