MCI Shooting - Anne Arundel County.

[maus92]

From a listener's standpoint, yesterday's radio communications was textbook. We often talk about on here the lack of interoperability and radio communications issues but yesterday proved different.

I started listening in shortly after the call went out and checked the archives for the minutes that I missed. Police and Fire remained calm on the radio and only provided important information without tying up the radio. I was also running Unitrunker and dozens of radios were logging in from various jurisdictions and the system handled it well.

Most of the initial traffic was on 11D Southern. Annapolis, Sheriffs, and MSP appeared to also use the talkgroup for operations. There were supporting agencies (NRP, Capitol Police, Howard PD, etc.) and I am not sure if they were also active on their talkgroup or not.

Sheriff and Annapolis talkgroups were also pretty active.

Initially fire put it in Juliet. As the incident expanded Charley (LZ ops), India, Lima, & Mike were all utilized. MCCU and the Alarmers used Disaster 3. Med 8 was also designated for the incident.

All agencies really did a great job on such a horrific incident.

I was impressed by the volume of traffic handled by the county's radio system (monitored via Unitrunker 2.) I have one instance monitoring AACo, and one on First / AACo site (I will review it to look for new TGs.) My voice radios are not set up to monitor any county police TGs - only fire and city police on the AA system, so I didn't really hear that much (plus it was way after the fact when I was back in the area.) The ICS system proved that it works well for expanding incidents when it is practiced routinely.

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

Confusing and reporting capacity at hospitals vs. actual injuries - one of the many reasons why authorities don't like folks repeating what they (think they) hear.....

Yup.

This incident was a prime example of why there should be an encrypted channel for fire. So much information was posted by "news" pages on Facebook/Twitter that was directly from the scanner as the incident was just occurring. Sensitive information like the dead count does not need to be immediately spread especially when you list the exact location where it is occurring.

I wonder what effect this will have on future scanning in Anne Arundel County?

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

I was impressed by the volume of traffic handled by the county's radio system (monitored via Unitrunker 2.) I have one instance monitoring AACo, and one on First / AACo site (I will review it to look for new TGs.) My voice radios are not set up to monitor any county police TGs - only fire and city police on the AA system, so I didn't really hear that much (plus it was way after the fact when I was back in the area.) The ICS system proved that it works well for expanding incidents when it is practiced routinely.

It may be an "old" system but it still works pretty well.

 

[maus92]

Yup.

This incident was a prime example of why there should be an encrypted channel for fire. So much information was posted by "news" pages on Facebook/Twitter that was directly from the scanner as the incident was just occurring. Sensitive information like the dead count does not need to be immediately spread especially when you list the exact location where it is occurring.

I wonder what effect this will have on future scanning in Anne Arundel County?

Cannot concur about an encrypted channel for information that will eventually be made public. Personally identifiable info - yes - public info that will become record, no. It might be inflated into an excuse to "justify" future encryption - but the citizens must push back on any such proposal, except in limited circumstances and tactical in nature - not because it might be inconvenient.

BTW, the more interesting "leak" came from someone within the investigation (not talking about fire in this example) - like the use of facial recognition software to ID the suspect that was initially denied by the police spokesman.