Can a radio be programmed with GPS tracking so a dispatcher can pull up a radio LID and know if an officer has his radio off or on? I thought I heard a Bexar County SO dispatcher (who was in analog for a little bit) asking an officer if he could turn his radio off and on again so it could reset. I though a dispatcher could only know who was on a channel when a radio keyed up on it and could see the numbers
Just depends on the type of system:
For SmartNet systems, the standard way to program a radio is using auto-affiliation, where the radio talks to the site as soon as it is turned on and can talk to a site, every time the user changes talkgroups, and when the radio is turned off. EDACS is similar.
For SmartZone and P25, auto-affiliation is mandatory for the subscribers to pass audio.
You can see this affiliation data with Unitrunker as well - if you let it run long enough, it will even show you who is logged in and out.
There are other tracking options as well. Remote Monitor/Radio Trace would allow a sysadmin or dispatcher to force a radio to transmit hot-mic for monitoring purposes. P25 IV&D infrastructure allows GPS data to be sent along with voice traffic - GPS receiver is standard on the APX family and can be added to the ASTO25 family. There are even ways to determine subscriber location automatically via triangulation.
But, in this case, I suspect the user hit his emergency button, thus the "reset".