"On The Way" from 1969. Very interesting to watch !!
Detroit Police Radio Dispatch Film 1969 "On The Way"
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"On The Way" from 1969. Very interesting to watch !!
radioman2001
Member
WOW an old GE Progress Line radio (Tube radio) and Federal PA-15 or 20 in the Scout car. Also heard a Motorola radio with PL reverse burst the VO. IBM 10mb multi-plate hard drives in those cabinets.
Pretty sure the dispatcher at 0:21 is the one that used to put out the Santa BOL Christmas Eve at Midnight every year!!
Hit_Factor
Member
I call our HTs at work PREP, the young Marines look at me like I'm crazy. Every once in a while I call Radio instead of the dispatch center.
73, K8HIT
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73, K8HIT
Icom: IC-7300, IC-PW1, ID-5100A, ID-51A Plus 2, IC-R30, Hytera PD782G, Kenwood TH-D74, Uniden SDS100, DVMega, SDRplay RSPduo
Those were the days! I was 19 and believe me those cars were very hard to out-run! Had one run me off Grand River Ave in Old-Redford, by my old hang-out Daily Hamber Drive-in. He dragged me out of the window and gave me a pretty good ass whooping! Lesson learned!
How did that radio system work then. Did they have separate frequencies for the scout and prep? Did they use repeaters or line of sight?
Multiple frequencies for certain. Repeaters were used most likely.
As I recall they only had a couple UHF analog frequencies in the 450MHz band. The precinct (16th back then, and later changed to the 8th.) had a very tall antenna about 100 feet behind the building. I don't think they had a repeater. The radio system was very large! It worked over a great distance!
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I started listening in 71 or 72, and Detroit was still on VHF. I'm thinking they were using repeaters, because I could hear everyone from Westland. For some reason I'm thinking they were at 155.59, at least for Precinct 4/Southwest Detroit. A good question is when did they go to 453? A rough guess, 1980. Could be way off. I'm old enough to remember the DeHoCo bus still using the old VHF-Low frequencies.
Hooligan
Member
Hard to believe, based on all the insanity & ineptitude of Detroit city government that we locals were exposed to from the mid-1960s to at-least the early 2000s (I left the area in 2002), but Detroit PD once was really sophisticated in terms of their radio system. When I lived on the edge of downtown Detroit, one day I walked over to the City-County Building (NOT gonna call it by its current name!) & poked around the official library/repository for the city. Lots of interesting DPD-related publicatins, but one thing in particular I remember reading was a history of the DPD Radio System. As many of you may know, DPD was the first agency to equip their patrol vehicles with radio receivers, then transceivers.
I believe it was the early 1970s that DPD switched from a standard VHF system to a very sophisticated (multi-site, voted) UHF system, keeping some of the old VHF freqs/repeaters for special units. At some point --maybe 1970s, early 1980s at the latest-- DPD added the Motorola MODAT data terminals to their cars (operated on another 453MHz UHF channel pair) & Automatic Vehicle Location technology using LORAN & feed to DPD Dispatch via VHF (159.090 if I recall). My era actively monitoring DPD didn't start until the early 1980s as a kid living in Birmingham, but I could hear DPD Narcotics Street Enforcement Unit on their repeater (going from memory, 156.030?) & some other special investigations units on other old DPD VHF simplex freqs thanks to a good antenna, and DPD sometimes surveiling suspects out in the suburbs. Especially on the simplex VHF freqs, it was pretty clear that the investigators & detectives had no clue that anyone could monitor them, and the DPD guys when operating out in the suburbs had no-respect for the "candy-assed" local PD. Even worse were the officers they knew who started-off with DPD, got lots of experience in a few years, then "sold-out" & got jobs with a suburban PD. By the late 1980s, a lot of these units that'd been using the old VHF freqs had moved to the new 800MHz analog trunked system, which they also assumed was secure, because the radios were so expensive and they'd been told the system was very high-tech. I lived on the 23rd floor of Rioverfront Towers Apartments at 100 Riverfront Drive (next to Joe Louis Arena) in 1st Precinct - Downtown Detroit from 1997-2002, so I could hear a lot of the "take me out of repeat" traffic on the inputs, and a lot of high-ranking DPD people, including a couple of the Chiefs, were my friends/neighbors because it was a luxurious, affluent high-rise apartment complex I think the first unit on that new 800MHz system to switch to DVP or DES was the Headquarters Surveillance Unit (HQSU), which along with DPD SWAT, Internal Affairs, & the Mayor's Security Detail, were utterly amazing to monitor on the 800MHz system because of what they used to talk about... Internal Affairs also used a 458MHz freq in simplex mode, the 453MHz side used in simplex mode by a juvenile dtention or halfway house type facility along Woodward Avenue.
The good old days... I think at some point in the 1990s, I started taking notes regarding DPD stuff -- freq/channel info, any DPD office locations they mentioned, callsign info, etc. I still have that, and should scan & share it, for historical 'value.'
I believe it was the early 1970s that DPD switched from a standard VHF system to a very sophisticated (multi-site, voted) UHF system, keeping some of the old VHF freqs/repeaters for special units. At some point --maybe 1970s, early 1980s at the latest-- DPD added the Motorola MODAT data terminals to their cars (operated on another 453MHz UHF channel pair) & Automatic Vehicle Location technology using LORAN & feed to DPD Dispatch via VHF (159.090 if I recall). My era actively monitoring DPD didn't start until the early 1980s as a kid living in Birmingham, but I could hear DPD Narcotics Street Enforcement Unit on their repeater (going from memory, 156.030?) & some other special investigations units on other old DPD VHF simplex freqs thanks to a good antenna, and DPD sometimes surveiling suspects out in the suburbs. Especially on the simplex VHF freqs, it was pretty clear that the investigators & detectives had no clue that anyone could monitor them, and the DPD guys when operating out in the suburbs had no-respect for the "candy-assed" local PD. Even worse were the officers they knew who started-off with DPD, got lots of experience in a few years, then "sold-out" & got jobs with a suburban PD. By the late 1980s, a lot of these units that'd been using the old VHF freqs had moved to the new 800MHz analog trunked system, which they also assumed was secure, because the radios were so expensive and they'd been told the system was very high-tech. I lived on the 23rd floor of Rioverfront Towers Apartments at 100 Riverfront Drive (next to Joe Louis Arena) in 1st Precinct - Downtown Detroit from 1997-2002, so I could hear a lot of the "take me out of repeat" traffic on the inputs, and a lot of high-ranking DPD people, including a couple of the Chiefs, were my friends/neighbors because it was a luxurious, affluent high-rise apartment complex I think the first unit on that new 800MHz system to switch to DVP or DES was the Headquarters Surveillance Unit (HQSU), which along with DPD SWAT, Internal Affairs, & the Mayor's Security Detail, were utterly amazing to monitor on the 800MHz system because of what they used to talk about... Internal Affairs also used a 458MHz freq in simplex mode, the 453MHz side used in simplex mode by a juvenile dtention or halfway house type facility along Woodward Avenue.
The good old days... I think at some point in the 1990s, I started taking notes regarding DPD stuff -- freq/channel info, any DPD office locations they mentioned, callsign info, etc. I still have that, and should scan & share it, for historical 'value.'
Hooligan
Member
Hey Jim, are you still on RR? I remember you saying you started monitoring DPD back in the 1960s...
wb8b
Newbie
Ah yes, the old analogue days (Bearcat 210XL 18ch), and no internet for information. You figured things out yourself. Back in 1980, the main dispatch frequencies were 453.300, 453.350, 453.700, 453.750, 453.800. Your main source of information was a Police-Call Radio Guide from Radio Shack, but that would just give precinct numbers listed for each frequency, and not exact area zone details. So we laid out a Detroit map, made up paper dots with 5 different colors (1 for each dispatch frequency), and mapped the whole city with dispatch frequency zone lines in one evening logging run locations. The things you did when you were 11
The_B_Chief
Member
In the late 80's and 90's we could hear Detroit Police on their uhf system using a handheld scanner in Erie Pa. I remember listening to a shootout and remarking how chill the officer was while calling for back up. You could hear the gunfire over the radio. We could also hear Detroit Fire on 154.310 I believe. I remember they had their own lingo and had never heard the term "stretching" or "redline" before.
Many nights we could hear all the cities along lake Erie. From Buffalo to Cleveland. Vermillion to Detroit. Those were great times.
Didn't Detroit use one-way radio at one point? From what I understood the scout cars had HF receivers on the 3 or 4 mhz bands. Officers would give dispositions, request information or back up through police call boxes or on the telephone until low band transmitters were added to the cars much later. Much like LAPD in the "calling all cars" era.
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Many nights we could hear all the cities along lake Erie. From Buffalo to Cleveland. Vermillion to Detroit. Those were great times.
Didn't Detroit use one-way radio at one point? From what I understood the scout cars had HF receivers on the 3 or 4 mhz bands. Officers would give dispositions, request information or back up through police call boxes or on the telephone until low band transmitters were added to the cars much later. Much like LAPD in the "calling all cars" era.
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Thanks for sharing. Brings back memories of listening to Atlanta Police in the 60's. Dad was an Atlanta LEO for 35 years and thus my hobby of scanning began.
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