Finding a stolen APX fire radio

[johnsonroy911]

I'm the fire chief of a fire department that recently had a break in during which one of our Motorola APX7000XE portable radios was stolen. Now I'm not the most educated guy on the topic of these radios, so please forgive if this is a dumb post or I ask a dumb question.

Since the radio was stolen the thieves have been keying it up on a local police frequency and causing general havoc. I'd like to get our $8000 radio back of course, but I'd also like to help catch these dirt bags. I called our radio service tech and asked him why we couldn't find the location by the built-in GPS? He said, "we never activated that feature." I then asked if there was any way to find their location using triangulation. Couldn't they at least narrow it down by seeing what repeater they're hitting? He said that wasn't likely to happen. He said the best we could hope for was waiting until they drained the battery and suddenly had no way to charge it.

I guess what I wanted to ask the experts here: Is there truly no easy way to locate stolen radios like this? I figured with today's technology they could be fairly easily located. Even with "old" technology like triangulation, I thought it would be a fairly quick matter to figure out where a radio was transmitting from.

 

[KevinC]

Too late for you, but "location on PTT" would be real nice about now.

If this is trunked and a Motorola system you may already have "Interference Locator", but it would need to be set up.

 

[DMS11B]

Try reaching out to your state coms department, I'm betting someone has doppler tracking system on their vehicle to locate rfi.

Presumably this radio is not on a trunked system, if it is just have the system admin Inhibit the radio.

 

[johnsonroy911]

Too late for you, but "location on PTT" would be real nice about now.

If this is trunked and a Motorola system you may already have "Interference Locator", but it would need to be set up.

Yes it would. Since I knew the radio had GPS I figured it would be a simple locate job. Guess not when they didn't bother to activate it.

 

[johnsonroy911]

Try reaching out to your state coms department, I'm betting someone has doppler tracking system on their vehicle to locate rfi.

Presumably this radio is not on a trunked system, if it is just have the system admin Inhibit the radio.

We are on a trunked system and radio service has been trying to shut it off but they've got the wrong serial number and they're still trying to find the correct one.

 

[Asunakiyori]

if the thieves are dumb... keep an eye out on ebay if you guys know the SN and they stupidly list it with SN pics to make some quick cash.. im sure some police work on a seller near your area happens to be selling a very similar looking/marked radio with little information would be easy to get a warrant on

 

[GTR8000]

We are on a trunked system and radio service has been trying to shut it off but they've got the wrong serial number and they're still trying to find the correct one.

You inhibit trunked subscribers by their subscriber ID, not by serial number. Surely if they are keying up on the trunked system, someone knows exactly which subscriber ID is the offender. I think you had better call the system admin for the trunked system, not your "radio service tech" to get this taken care of before the battery dies and you lose the chance to inhibit the radio.

 

[DMS11B]

You inhibit trunked subscribers by their subscriber ID, not by serial number. Surely if they are keying up on the trunked system, someone knows exactly which subscriber ID is the offender. I think you had better call the system admin for the trunked system, not your "radio service tech" to get this taken care of before the battery dies and you lose the chance to inhibit the radio.

This guy is 100% correct

 

[N4KVE]

if the thieves are dumb... keep an eye out on ebay if you guys know the SN and they stupidly list it with SN pics to make some quick cash.. im sure some police work on a seller near your area happens to be selling a very similar looking/marked radio with little information would be easy to get a warrant on

Isn’t this the reason there are so many “no tag radios”?

 

[PACNWDude]

In my sphere of influence we just Transmit Inhibit a radio, as we have had thieves dumb enough to bring them into a local radio shop for repair. They can listen, but PTT does not work, they then think the radio is broken, and want it repaired in order to sell it.

We do not have GPS enabled on ours either (think this is dumb as well, but some decisions are out of my hands), and this has actually resulted in radios being found on Offer Up in the past. (Ask seller for picture of the tags under the battery, most will provide that if they think they will get $$$). Then we let the public safety side deal with the perp.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

If this radio is on a trunked system, the system administrator, armed with only the radio user/subscriber ID can inhibit the radio making it useless. Also he can dynamically regroup the radio to a spare talkgroup and force selector disable. This way investigators can converse with the individual to coerce them into revealing themselves and they cannot switch to any other talkgroups. Your radio "guys" can force that spare talkgroup to a specific RF channel for direction finding if you want to go that far.

However the battery may go bad quickly. Maybe you can help the perpetrator by leaving a charger out in the open to trap them, like cheese?

 

[N1XDS]

What is your town/city and state you live in so we can get the word around about the stolen radio.

 

[Asunakiyori]

Isn’t this the reason there are so many “no tag radios”?

no tags could also be a parts tossed together radio, given what the thieves are doing on a LEO TG they are being dumb so its possible they are dumb enough to just try and sell it as is once the battery dies

 

[mmckenna]

Have the system admin block the radio ID.

There lots of things you can try, but having gone through this before, the a$$ hats that took the radio will lose interest once no one engages them and they can't access the system. The radio will get tossed, thrown in a drawer, dumped at a pawn shop, end up on eBay, ham radio flea market, or Facebook market place.

It's probably gone, unless you are very lucky.

If they were not smart enough to swipe a charger with the radio, the problem will solve itself shortly.

 

[jeepsandradios]

Even if it had GPS enabled in the subscriber there is backend equipment that is needed to support that. If the controlling agency doesn ot wupport GPS for various reasons turning it on in a subscriber doens't help at all. There are lots of systems out there that use XTS/XTL and never had the backend for data. YMMV

 

[MTS2000des]

What he said. GNSS requires a location server on the core, associated application to access it, and features enabled in the radios. All of which cost money. As said, the radio ID can be entered into the core's network control application to inhibit either in real time or passive, meaning even if the battery dies or radio goes out range, if it shows up again, as soon as it attempts to affiliate, it will be zapped.

Check Facebook marketplace and ebay. You'd be surprised how soon it will show up. Hopefully a police report was filed so the serial is entered into NCIC and hits your PD's pawn desk.

 

[PD47JD]

We are on a trunked system and radio service has been trying to shut it off but they've got the wrong serial number and they're still trying to find the correct one.

Time to switch to another radio service provider.