Ocean City MD Gets Encrypted

[ginky4]

I came down to Ocean City MD this week with my Uniden BCD325XLT Scanner planning on listening to Ocean City Police & Fire like I do every year only to find out that they encrypted their communications on March 1st.

I can still hear bits and pieces on the Fire side especially dispatch but nothing really on the Police side. The weird thing is that when I rode up into Fenwick it seemed like I could hear things again.

Almost like the encryption is only in Ocean City.

I asked one of the police why they did this and he said some Facebook group called Eastern Shore Undercover was compromising a lot of their stuff.

 

[jtwalker]

Police in Worcester Co went E earlier this year (except MD state police) but fire and ems is still in the clear.

Sounds like your issue with fire/ems is simulcast distortion to me.

 

[maus92]

Ocean City proper has 3 simulcast transmit sites: a 100M tower in central OC, and 2 water tank sites north and south. As @jtwalker speculates, it's likely that simulcast distortion is causing your reception issues, and that theory is reinforced by your reception improving when you travel north of the city where you are receiving signalling from fewer or perhaps only one tower site.

FWIW, the fire service (except for a secure channel to pass gate codes) is not encrypted, nor is the beach patrol.

 

[LeSueurC]

I came down to Ocean City MD this week with my Uniden BCD325XLT Scanner planning on listening to Ocean City Police & Fire like I do every year only to find out that they encrypted their communications on March 1st.

I can still hear bits and pieces on the Fire side especially dispatch but nothing really on the Police side. The weird thing is that when I rode up into Fenwick it seemed like I could hear things again.

Almost like the encryption is only in Ocean City.

I asked one of the police why they did this and he said some Facebook group called Eastern Shore Undercover was compromising a lot of their stuff.

Yep. That group and numerous others around the country have ruined it. It happened in Virginia Beach last year I believe. And if you ask the group leader about it, he’ll say something along the lines of “transparency”. They’re not hiding anything, they just don’t want every single call blasted. Then what happens is you have people calling the 911 center asking questions about a call and you have people showing up on the scene and getting in the way and making LE’s job twice as hard. There’s a big difference of having a group like that where you post cause it affects traffic, etc. But posting every single call you hear is asinine, it has ruined this hobby and it’s going to happen in a lot more states and departments.

 

[1977addis]

Police in Worcester Co went E earlier this year (except MD state police) but fire and ems is still in the clear.

Sounds like your issue with fire/ems is simulcast distortion to me.

I agree, i was down there in mid May and heard FD/EMS as normal

 

[ginky4]

After doing a few more days of testing it appears that only the Ocean City Police channels got encrypted.

I was able to hear Fire/EMS Dispatch and the other response channels ok along with the Beach Patrol channels.

 

[ginky4]

The Ocean City Police Transitioned to Encrypted Radio Transmissions -

The Ocean City Police Transitioned to Encrypted Radio Transmissions Ocean City, MD (March 4, 2024): The Ocean City Police and several other Worcester County law enforcement agencies transitioned to encrypted radio transmissions for all law enforcement activity. This transition occurred at 7:00...

oceancitymd.gov

 

[jtwalker]

There is an echo in here

 

[Larry51]

Ocean City proper has 3 simulcast transmit sites: a 100M tower in central OC, and 2 water tank sites north and south. As @jtwalker speculates, it's likely that simulcast distortion is causing your reception issues, and that theory is reinforced by your reception improving when you travel north of the city where you are receiving signalling from fewer or perhaps only one tower site.

FWIW, the fire service (except for a secure channel to pass gate codes) is not encrypted, nor is the beach patrol.

Just got back from a week at the beach in Ocean City (38th street ocean block). Took along the SDS100 and BCD396T, the latter running "close call" and controlled by my laptop.

As posted, the OC police channels are all encrypted (SDS100 stops on the frequency, but you hear nothing). The FD and Beach Patrol are in the clear with the exception of OCFD4 (4 Ops) which was encrypted. That may be the gate codes channel that @maus92 was referring to. I think one of the fire marshal investigations channels is also encrypted, but I didn't see any activity on that one.