waynejrobertson
Newbie
Does anyone have a iist of Undercover Officers terminology & slang. For DETROIT, WARREN OR S.E.C.I.D. - D.R.A.N.O.
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Thanks
DETROIT, WARREN OR S.E.C.I.D. - D.R.A.N.O. Undercover Terminology & Slang
- Thread starter waynejrobertson
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freqs
Member
i found a list of at least 100 it will take some time to post it but i know for sure warren undercover is encrypted .
freqs
Member
EDIT: Data removed by poster request
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Ive heard some call "Wendy's Restaurant" ponytails and McDonald's Arches or golden arches. Most of them are just a play on words. 572 = I-275
freqs
Member
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Just kinda throwing this out as a thought...
From my understanding, a lot of this slang is out there so that an undercover officer, or any officer for that matter, can transmit their locations, status, etc, without tipping off the bad guys to what they're doing. for example, if an undercover is being taken somewhere, and has an open phone line with his team, he can communicate with them. They can also communicate with each other via radio and do the same.
With that in mind, is it really a good idea to be posting this out in the open, where anyone can see it?
From my understanding, a lot of this slang is out there so that an undercover officer, or any officer for that matter, can transmit their locations, status, etc, without tipping off the bad guys to what they're doing. for example, if an undercover is being taken somewhere, and has an open phone line with his team, he can communicate with them. They can also communicate with each other via radio and do the same.
With that in mind, is it really a good idea to be posting this out in the open, where anyone can see it?
freqs
Member
then the moderators can delete the post
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bigbluemsp
Member
Unfortunately the USBP trucks are public knowledge, they show them off at car shows, collector shows, open houses and in publications so it's widely known they exist and what they look like.
This is a Officer Safety issue to me.
Absolutely not.
freqs
Member
like i said the mods can delete it
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Of course they can, they can delete any thread. I'm not sure that I would call them "god" but whatever you worship is your choice.
I'm just saying that if I were an undercover cop, any opinion I have of scanner listeners would change a LOT if they started posting all my code words. Especially for a first-time poster. Wayne Jr only came to this forum to ask that. Seems suspicious to me...
I'm just saying that if I were an undercover cop, any opinion I have of scanner listeners would change a LOT if they started posting all my code words. Especially for a first-time poster. Wayne Jr only came to this forum to ask that. Seems suspicious to me...
loumaag
Silent Key - Aug 2014
ATTN: freqs
It might be an officer safety issue, as one reporter said; or it may just be another reason to encrypt, as more than one reporter said (although there is no evidence such things are ever the reason), but all in all, it is just known information that anyone who listens long enough can gather.
It is up to you freqs, the original poster of the information, to make that determination. The rest of you, please stop the reports.
EDIT: data removed above
Indeed, we (the moderators) have received several requests to do just that. Now if you want it deleted or edited out, say so and it will be done.
It might be an officer safety issue, as one reporter said; or it may just be another reason to encrypt, as more than one reporter said (although there is no evidence such things are ever the reason), but all in all, it is just known information that anyone who listens long enough can gather.
It is up to you freqs, the original poster of the information, to make that determination. The rest of you, please stop the reports.
EDIT: data removed above
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Common Knowledge
Rdale, this slang hasn't changed in thirty years. I'm over 50, and the same exact nicknames were being used by DRANO and Dearborn when I was 18. It's no big secret. Anyone can listen to it for five minutes and figure out exactly what they are saying, were they are at, etc, just by using an ounce of common sense.
If you saved the deleted list, go back and look it, and honestly say you could'nt figure out what they meant in short order if you heard them talking on the air.
Rdale, this slang hasn't changed in thirty years. I'm over 50, and the same exact nicknames were being used by DRANO and Dearborn when I was 18. It's no big secret. Anyone can listen to it for five minutes and figure out exactly what they are saying, were they are at, etc, just by using an ounce of common sense.
If you saved the deleted list, go back and look it, and honestly say you could'nt figure out what they meant in short order if you heard them talking on the air.
That's all fine and dandy. It's not the specifics of this agency though -- I don't believe RR should be used to send a list of code words to first-time posters. Per the mod's report, several others had that same opinion. But in the end, the moderators left it up to freqs to decide.
He felt it was a bad idea so removed them, if you want to repost that's certainly your right.
He felt it was a bad idea so removed them, if you want to repost that's certainly your right.
Hooligan
Member
If the bad guys are smart enough to have & listen to a device tuned to the right frequency, they're smart enough to figure out "6-bound on the wire, at a stale ruby at the shoe" means southbound on Telegraph Ave, stopped at a red light (about to flip green) at the intersection of Sibley. Especially if *they* are the ones whose movements are being reported! Most bad guys thankfully are clueless about scanners, but not all are. There are plenty of idiots here on rr.com that have somehow discovered scanners, so I assume that halfway intelligent bad guys have, too!
It's up to the LEA to properly protect their communications, and most of the code-names they use have very little OPSEC value, and are used more so out of ancient tradition and as part of some secret-squirrel club/Walter Mitty-ish fantasy.
This is just as true for the MSP-managed multi-agency narcotics units like DRANO as it is for DEA or the US military.
Do you know why good old 154.905MHz used to be called "Suppressed?" It's because the fairy-tale most of the guys were told was that the frequency allocation was suppressed from the FCC database, thus it was a "secret" channel that bad-guys or scanner-geeks wouldn't be able to find! Insanity...
Over 20 years ago now when DRANO & most other regional narcotics units (Western Wayne, LAWNET, OMNI, Oakland NET, Lansing area's Metro, et. al) used to be on the old MSP CID 'Red' channel with their semi-undercover offices, a couple local radio-geek friends & I used to have great fun finding the locations of the bases by either just RDF'ing them over time when they talked to their personnel on Red, or we'd surveil their guys when they broke off a job & were headed back to their base.
DRANO's secret office at the time was known as "The Sewer" & was located in part of a building -- perhaps it was a former school or something, that was being used as some sort of training center for the Mazda Flat Rock factory.
The way I found LAWNET's "Castle" was by following a LAWNET member code-named "Mulligan" (who now happens to be the Sheriff of Washtenaw County) after he announced he was headed there at the conclusion of a surveillance. In this era, the Castle was some sort of old house down a dirt road off Ecorse Rd right next to Willow Run Airport/Hydramatic.
I hope Western Wayne Narcotics & Western Wayne Auto Theft weren't exactly trying to have their location be secret, since it was the old Canton PD bldg right along Michigan Ave (which made their dumpster very easy to trash-pick...), and OMNI was operating out of the old MSP Post on Telegraph Ave in I think Monroe.
I'm not boasting, just trying to give an example of how easy this was (in some of the 20+ year old examples above, I was still in high school at the time I was doing it) to do, and the duty to take measures from stopping both radio-geek twerps like I was, as well as criminals, from gathering intel via communications monitoring & possibly exploiting the data is up to them. Their lives can easily depend on it, yet they're dumb/ignorant/negligent enough to think the bad guys are too stupid to have a scanner, and too stupid to figure out 95% of their codes, especially when the context is known.
Are we trying to get more encryption???
I was assigned to an undercover unit some 20 years ago and find this thread interesting to see that other units do radio like we did.
BUT, I have to agree with Rob Dale. Should we (the hobyists) let out to the public the things we have learned through the hoby?? Dont you guys get it??? this is why more and more PDs are going encrypted!
I was assigned to an undercover unit some 20 years ago and find this thread interesting to see that other units do radio like we did.
BUT, I have to agree with Rob Dale. Should we (the hobyists) let out to the public the things we have learned through the hoby?? Dont you guys get it??? this is why more and more PDs are going encrypted!
bigbluemsp
Member
Thats what I was getting to and why I reported this posting.
MaizeBlueFlyover
Member
As Hooligan said, most criminals are not smart enough to be able to program a scanner and know where to find surveillance details at. Especially now adays with the scanners even being more complicated to program.
Anyone who is smart enough to have a radio capable of listening in is going to easily figure out what the terminology means.
All you have to do is figure one street name out and look at a map, then you can easily figure out the other street names they are referring to.
RayAir
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I sure hope the "slang" or code words they use are not meant as a means of communications security because it is very easy to determine their meaning in most cases. U/C or surveillance units should NOT be "in-the-clear" and especially should not be in-the-clear over a repeater (like a few agencies around here).
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