WuLabsWuTecH
Member
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2008
- Messages
- 195
So the other day, I was working a shift when my partner was in the back of the squad and I was driving. His walkie was acting up and asked for me to hand him mine so I did and thought nothing more of it--our radios act up from time to time. After we dropped off the patient, his radio seemed to be working fine again on the next call though he had to retransmit once to the hospital since they didn't get one of his transmissions. Once again, nothing abnormal. On the third run, his radio basically quit working for all intents and purposes. He could hear other people's transmissions but no one (including my radio) could hear his transmissions.
As we loaded up the patient, I got a call on my radio asking if I could phone call the dispatcher. I replied that we were in the middle of patient care so she just asked me over the air for my partner's radio number. We gave the dispatcher the info and the dispatcher said she saw some issues with it and was shutting it down remotely and advised us to be aware that it would no longer work. When we marked at the hospital, I got a private call on my radio to give my supervisor a call as soon as we were done with patient care. And this is where the fiasco blew up.
I was asked to return to the station out of service and when we got back, there were a lot of people wearing a lot of brass waiting for us. It turns out, while my partner could hear everything on his radio, he was transmitting on random talkgroups. There was a sheriff's operation going on at the same time, and his radio reports and other transmissions were showing up on their tactical channels and the police dispatch channel.. Which one he was on at any given moment seemingly random. I had never met a lot of the brass who were there that day, but our station LT was also called back and trying to make the brass less angry.
The only thing different that we did that day was that when he grabbed his radio in the morning during truck check, he didn't check the battery level and only later realized it was low when a run came in. So he put his issued radio back on the charger and grabbed one of the spares to save time rather than take off the clip and change out the battery. That's why dispatch wanted his radio number--all of our radios are numbered in a way that makes them identifiable, so they saw that the radio transmitting randomly was the spare but had no idea who had the spare.
So my question for the experts on this forum is: what the heck happened? Granted this sheriff's operation wasn't some extremely dangerous operation, but had it been, this could cause HUGE issues. I assume this is why the brass was so upset. Had a deputy gone down and been calling for help, my partner could have been walking on top of him with a hospital report and have no idea he was doing it! I had no idea what was going on, but has anyone heard of something like this happening? They went through his radio, and saw that he didn't even have the sheriff's channels programmed in (as it should, we only have one police dispatch channel on ours--the tac channels and such are not on the fire radios).
I'm also not sure what they thought asking us 20 questions was going to get them. I certainly didn't know anything about this and most of my answers to their questions was, "I have no idea, sir." The guys from the sheriff's comm office wanted my LT to write up my partner and for him to face disciplinary action for not signing out the radio properly but my LT had our backs on this one and told them that the he used the backup exactly as they are intended to be used and our policies state that if a radio fails, he was allowed to grab one and fill out the paperwork later.
It was a grand mess though, but I'm wondering if anyone has any idea what might have been going on? We test the backup radios weekly, but the last time it was signed out to be used was nearly 6 months ago. The radio doesn't get used very often so it's not like someone dropped it too many times! What could have possibly happened to cause this mess?
As we loaded up the patient, I got a call on my radio asking if I could phone call the dispatcher. I replied that we were in the middle of patient care so she just asked me over the air for my partner's radio number. We gave the dispatcher the info and the dispatcher said she saw some issues with it and was shutting it down remotely and advised us to be aware that it would no longer work. When we marked at the hospital, I got a private call on my radio to give my supervisor a call as soon as we were done with patient care. And this is where the fiasco blew up.
I was asked to return to the station out of service and when we got back, there were a lot of people wearing a lot of brass waiting for us. It turns out, while my partner could hear everything on his radio, he was transmitting on random talkgroups. There was a sheriff's operation going on at the same time, and his radio reports and other transmissions were showing up on their tactical channels and the police dispatch channel.. Which one he was on at any given moment seemingly random. I had never met a lot of the brass who were there that day, but our station LT was also called back and trying to make the brass less angry.
The only thing different that we did that day was that when he grabbed his radio in the morning during truck check, he didn't check the battery level and only later realized it was low when a run came in. So he put his issued radio back on the charger and grabbed one of the spares to save time rather than take off the clip and change out the battery. That's why dispatch wanted his radio number--all of our radios are numbered in a way that makes them identifiable, so they saw that the radio transmitting randomly was the spare but had no idea who had the spare.
So my question for the experts on this forum is: what the heck happened? Granted this sheriff's operation wasn't some extremely dangerous operation, but had it been, this could cause HUGE issues. I assume this is why the brass was so upset. Had a deputy gone down and been calling for help, my partner could have been walking on top of him with a hospital report and have no idea he was doing it! I had no idea what was going on, but has anyone heard of something like this happening? They went through his radio, and saw that he didn't even have the sheriff's channels programmed in (as it should, we only have one police dispatch channel on ours--the tac channels and such are not on the fire radios).
I'm also not sure what they thought asking us 20 questions was going to get them. I certainly didn't know anything about this and most of my answers to their questions was, "I have no idea, sir." The guys from the sheriff's comm office wanted my LT to write up my partner and for him to face disciplinary action for not signing out the radio properly but my LT had our backs on this one and told them that the he used the backup exactly as they are intended to be used and our policies state that if a radio fails, he was allowed to grab one and fill out the paperwork later.
It was a grand mess though, but I'm wondering if anyone has any idea what might have been going on? We test the backup radios weekly, but the last time it was signed out to be used was nearly 6 months ago. The radio doesn't get used very often so it's not like someone dropped it too many times! What could have possibly happened to cause this mess?