Scanner Tales: We can be the Good Guys sometimes

[N9JIG]

Scanners and public safety professionals have had a turbulent love/hate relationship over the years. While many public safety professionals (me included) started off by being scanner users, many of these same people have had some serious issues with other scanner users. From so-called “cop-watchers” harassing police while they try to do their jobs to burglars listening in to avoid arrests and those that actively interfere with radio communications to some more innocent guys standing behind the caution tape listening in, the interactions can be difficult.

Not all the time, however, are scanner users the bad guy. Sometimes they can actually be a real help. Here are a few instances I have seen over the years.

Having the AVLS Blues:
Back in the 80’s, there wasn’t the widespread availability of GPS like we have now. Back then if you wanted to track your police cars you needed to install an AVLS (Automatic Vehicle Location System). These usually transmitted a beacon signal that was either tied to some sort of location device (early GPS or even older technologies) or used fixed receiver sites for triangulation.

One town in the south suburbs of Chicago had one of these systems and it transmitted short data bursts on their old dispatch channel, then used for car-to-car and secondary use (as many VHF channels were after most suburbs switched to UHF T-Band in the 70’s). This was not really a problem for them as they used PL for voice traffic and none for the data. The problem arose when the radio shop apparently wired the AVLS system into the radio of at least 2 cars incorrectly, sending the data to the selected channel instead of steering it to the desired channel. Most of the time this wasn’t an issue, but some guys would set the channel switch to ISPERN, the statewide emergency police channel on 155.475.

Now suddenly ISPERN was getting inundated with these data bursts. They would start most days at 3PM and stop at 11PM. Of course, us scanner guys knew what was happening, but we had to prove it to solve it. One of us lived close by and recognized the data bursts as the same used by a nearby town’s AVLS system so we met up down there and staked out the police station. We got lucky the third night and started hearing the data come up on ISPERN, we then were able to pinpoint it to the specific car.

We went into the PD, spoke to the watch commander and explained what we found. He was skeptical but after a couple of us identified ourselves as police officers from other towns he relented and went out to the parking lot with us. We showed him the car we thought it was coming from and sure enough the radio was selected to ISPERN. We shut that radio off and no more data. Turned the radio back on and there was the data again.

It turned out that the officer assigned to that car may have figured out that his location would not be shown if that radio was selected to ISPERN. We were asked not to say anything for a while and the Watch Commander had that radio fixed shortly thereafter. He called a week or two later and let us know that the officer assigned to the car was spending quality time with a girlfriend outside his assigned beat and that that issue was now resolved. We let the State Police district there now what we found, and they were thankful it had been resolved.

Another town way up north had a similar system that they decided to use their town’s Public Works channel for. The problem was they never bothered to tell PW about that. It wasn’t a problem on night shift but during the day PW was torqued off when they started hearing this data, it was strong enough to cover their voice traffic. They had no idea what was happening until one of their employees mentioned it to a friend who was a scanner club member. He asked around and some of us quickly figured out where it was coming from. Eventually PW added PL to their channel and that helped somewhat. As for the relationship between the police and PW, I think it didn’t recover soon enough, I had heard gossip on the grapevine of tensions for several years after this.

Gypsy tow trucks and “Sandra”:
Another user of the GMRS channel we used back in the 1980’s was a gypsy tow truck operation on the North Side of Chicago. Ever hear of the “Lincoln Park Pirates” (Lincoln Towing), infamous for towing legally parked cars or even occupied cars for ransom? These guys made Lincoln Towing look like polite kitty cats. They would talk about jacking cars off the street and falsifying the paperwork to say they were in their contracted lots, hiding around the corner with spotters to pounce on cars parked in or near to the lots and other nefarious activities that would make even a politician blush.

Why would we bother going after these guys? Well, for one, they could swear up a storm. Such foul language would make a Marine quiver. This is a family story so we will leave it at that. Second, they were running a totally illegal operation and preying on people. They openly talked about grabbing cars off the street to claim they were in a client’s lot, how they would break into the cars and steal valuables as well as other illegal activities. Third, they had no license for the radio system and that made us mad.

We were able to find the trucks soon enough, but they were (illegally) unmarked and the license plates were illegible (likely on purpose). A friend who worked for the State Department of Revenue searched state records and could not find any business licenses for them, and (in the days before the Internet became available to mortals like us) we spent hours searching phone books, city records and other records trying to get a hint who they were. We could find the parked trucks occasionally and would see them with a victim, but we couldn’t find their lot or shop.

One point of order here: A couple of us were cops or other law enforcement employees. We had contacts in several layers of the state and city governments, including the regulatory agencies governing towing and recovery companies. They were very interested in these guys!

The apparent patriarch of the family business would call out the name of whom we finally deduced was his daughter by yelling “Sandra” in a very distinctive eastern European accent. She would send them on calls and coordinate spotters working the lots they trolled.

For over a year they defied probability and evaded identification. Many nights were spent by MRG (Metro Radio Group, our CARMA-affiliated GMRS club at the time) members trying to track them down and eventually a year or so later they were found at a former gas station on the far North Side of Chicago.

When we finally did catch up to them, we took copious notes and pictures and even some video. Remember that this was before the days of smart phones, video cameras were huge and expensive, photographs were done with film and voice recording was done in cassette tape.

Some detailed sleuthing and a certain amount of stalking eventually turned up home addresses for the various family members. A few letters sent with incriminating evidence were sent and they were requested to remove themselves from the planet, or at least the frequency. One bright and sunny winter’s day they up and disappeared, never to be heard of again. We never found out for sure if they just moved to another channel or maybe even shut down the business. As far as we were concerned, they were off the frequency and that was all we cared about. Our friends in the state government were sent what we found but we never heard back from them.

Ambulance Chasing:
In the mid 1980’s the 7 GMRS interstitial frequencies sandwiched between the regular pairs were not authorized for any use. While later on (1989) they would become legal for low power use by GMRS licensees and later by FRS users, at this time they were not authorized for anyone. Occasional simplex use would be heard here and there but for the most part they were quiet. Then one day a couple CARMA members started hearing what sounded like car-to-car traffic of a fire department or ambulance service operation on a repeater on one of these interstitials. A few hours of DF’ing found that the repeater was located on a tower in Arlington Hts., across from Buffalo Grove High School. This tower was the site of a high-power FM radio station (WYEN, “Request Radio 107.9”) as well as several land-mobile antennas. One of these antennas was being used for this illegal repeater a couple hundred feet up the tall broadcast tower.

Traffic on this repeater was recorded onto cassette, photos taken and eventually the mobile units were found. They turned out to be a local private ambulance service, using it to chit-chat about the runs they were on and the traffic conditions they dealt with. CARMA members who had contacts in the FCC provided the information collected, including the recordings, photos and activity logs. A few days later the repeater disappeared, never to be heard from again. According to the FCC Field Office in Park Ridge a fine was levied, and the repeater owner was advised to remove the repeater or have it confiscated.

(See Part Two)

 

[N9JIG]

Part Two of Two:

Stupid Burglars:
I was teased often at work since I had multiple scanner antennas on my personal car and kept a handheld scanner in my duty bag, along with a mag-mount antenna. I even bought my own portable radio that I carried as it was a lot better than the ones the department issued. That didn’t stop my coworkers from calling me when they stopped a guy they suspected of criminal behavior who had a scanner. They would read off the frequencies on the crystals or on the display (if they had one of those new-fangled programmable scanners) and I would tell them what that frequency was for.

One day one of our detectives told me that they suspected a burglary crew was using some sort of two-way radios to coordinate their activities. They asked if I had a radio that could hear them. Now this was in the days before FRS and the cheap walkie-talkies of the day available for purchase or shoplifting at Radio Shack used 49 MHz. I set up a programmable handheld scanner with the common walkie-talkie frequencies and loaned it to our detectives for the weekend. I also programmed the same freqs into a scanner in our Communications Center so the overnight dispatcher (also a radio guy like me) could listen in on them.

Sure enough, that Friday night the scanner came alive on one of these channels. The detectives heard the crew talking about corners in which the streetlight was out, and when that wasn’t optimal for hitting, they picked some areas that were and shot out the streetlights with a BB gun. The good guys were able to figure out the locations and staked out the areas with newly darkened streetlights and soon nabbed the crew, taking 2 cars, a BB gun, proceeds and several cheap walkies.

I have been retired for almost a decade but still get calls one in a while from former coworkers asking about frequencies found in scanners of arrestees. I got such a call just this summer.

Railroad helpers:
As a railfan I always have a scanner listening to the local railroad frequencies. A couple of times I had an opportunity to assist a crew. Once out in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming there was a train that broke a coupler 100 cars back in a 140-car hopper train (empty coal cars). I was nearby when it went into emergency (automatic stopping when the brake line disconnects) and saw the conductor stepping off the train. I had come up from behind the train and saw the separation a mile or so back, so I pulled up next to the guy and told him what I saw. He was not happy, but his mood improved when I offered to drive him to the location and that he could put the replacement coupler knuckle in the trunk instead of carrying it. I don’t know how much they weigh but it must be close to 100 pounds of steel, not a fun thing to carry in the 90-degree Wyoming heat in mid-July. He hopped in and we headed back to the rear of the train. He saw my radios and heard his dispatcher talking to his engineer about their situation. There was no other trains, MOW or other railroad employees around to help so he would have had to lug that coupler all the way back and probably would have had to walk the train to find it before returning for the coupler.

We got back to the separated cars, and he replaced the broken coupler knuckle. I offered to drive him back to the locomotive, but he said he had to walk the train to check for other issues. He did tell me to wait near the locomotive if I could and when he got back after inspecting the train gave me a copy of the timetable for that subdivision and a tour of the brand-new SD50 locomotive while they built up the air pressure again.

On several other occasions me or other friends have provided rides for rail crews in various situations. Once we were able to source a water supply for a shortline’s locomotive that shut down due to a lack of cooling water. My buddy knew a guy who worked on the local volunteer fire department, so they sent a tanker (as they called them then, nowadays they call them tenders) to fill the locomotive’s water tank.

On a trip out to Nebraska and Wyoming (I did these trips often for years) I was pacing an eastbound UP train along US-30 in central Nebraska and the dispatcher told the train to stop in the next town and “Grab a Pepsi” while they waited for some congestion to clear up.

I needed gas and snacks myself so when the train stopped across from a Coastal station I did too and filled up the gas tank, emptied my personal holding tank and grabbed some snacks. The conductor was just ahead of me in line and had a couple Coca-Cola’s. I said something like “I thought she specifically said Pepsi’s on the radio”. He looked at me funny and then realized I was the goof chasing them for the last 50 miles or so sticking a camera out the window. He got a laugh, and we chatted for a while. He invited me up to the cab and introduced me to his brother-in-law who was the engineer. It turns out he was also a railfan and had chased some of the Alco shortlines in Michigan that I was really familiar with. Pretty soon however they got a green signal, and it was time to leave.

Cardinal Sins not committed:
Occasionally, I would hear something on the scanner and think I had some information that would help the cops responding. In my mind I knew it all and would be able to help. Unless I knew the guys talking, I normally kept my mouth shut, a difficult thing for me. We have all read the arguments about having ham radio gear modified to be able to transmit out of band, and I have had some of these radios that I bought already modified. I have been tempted several times over the years to jump in and tell a responding officer some tidbit, but I would bite my tongue and keep quiet. On my radios that were capable of transmitting on public safety frequencies I would often program in local police or fire channels but if I wasn’t able to program it for RX only would et the transmit to a ham channel.

The only time I reacted to a call I heard on the scanner was once when I was driving in a small town in Wisconsin many years ago and saw a vehicle that was reported as wanted for some criminal act I heard about a few minutes’ prior on the scanner. I called the Sheriff’s Department on my cell phone and told the dispatcher I was an off-duty officer from Illinois and had heard the broadcast and that the car was in front of me. I provided the location as I drove, dropped back as far as I could while keeping eyes on the car and waited for a deputy to arrive in the area. A few minutes later the car was stopped after a short pursuit into a pasture and 2 guys arrested. I just kept going on my way and got a call an hour or so later to fill me in.

Every once in a while we would get a call from a scanner listener that a car or person we mentioned on the radio was seen by the listener. We had a code phrase (“Concerned Citizen”) for them so the guys would know how the info came in. Most of the time it was legitimate and occasionally contributed to an arrest or once, the recovery of a lost dementia patient.

It wasn’t always a good thing though. We arrested a couple of local kids whom we knew (small town…) who were setting small fires so they could hear the fire calls go out on the scanner. One of our guys noticed them showing up or driving by on multiple calls and put two and two together.

Like anything else (guns, hammers, shovels etc.) scanners can be a valuable tool or interesting diversion when handled properly. It can also be a tool of destruction when not. It depends on the user.

 

[trentbob]

Part Two of Two:

Stupid Burglars:
I was teased often at work since I had multiple scanner antennas on my personal car and kept a handheld scanner in my duty bag, along with a mag-mount antenna. I even bought my own portable radio that I carried as it was a lot better than the ones the department issued. That didn’t stop my coworkers from calling me when they stopped a guy they suspected of criminal behavior who had a scanner. They would read off the frequencies on the crystals or on the display (if they had one of those new-fangled programmable scanners) and I would tell them what that frequency was for.

One day one of our detectives told me that they suspected a burglary crew was using some sort of two-way radios to coordinate their activities. They asked if I had a radio that could hear them. Now this was in the days before FRS and the cheap walkie-talkies of the day available for purchase or shoplifting at Radio Shack used 49 MHz. I set up a programmable handheld scanner with the common walkie-talkie frequencies and loaned it to our detectives for the weekend. I also programmed the same freqs into a scanner in our Communications Center so the overnight dispatcher (also a radio guy like me) could listen in on them.

Sure enough, that Friday night the scanner came alive on one of these channels. The detectives heard the crew talking about corners in which the streetlight was out, and when that wasn’t optimal for hitting, they picked some areas that were and shot out the streetlights with a BB gun. The good guys were able to figure out the locations and staked out the areas with newly darkened streetlights and soon nabbed the crew, taking 2 cars, a BB gun, proceeds and several cheap walkies.

I have been retired for almost a decade but still get calls one in a while from former coworkers asking about frequencies found in scanners of arrestees. I got such a call just this summer.

Railroad helpers:
As a railfan I always have a scanner listening to the local railroad frequencies. A couple of times I had an opportunity to assist a crew. Once out in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming there was a train that broke a coupler 100 cars back in a 140-car hopper train (empty coal cars). I was nearby when it went into emergency (automatic stopping when the brake line disconnects) and saw the conductor stepping off the train. I had come up from behind the train and saw the separation a mile or so back, so I pulled up next to the guy and told him what I saw. He was not happy, but his mood improved when I offered to drive him to the location and that he could put the replacement coupler knuckle in the trunk instead of carrying it. I don’t know how much they weigh but it must be close to 100 pounds of steel, not a fun thing to carry in the 90-degree Wyoming heat in mid-July. He hopped in and we headed back to the rear of the train. He saw my radios and heard his dispatcher talking to his engineer about their situation. There was no other trains, MOW or other railroad employees around to help so he would have had to lug that coupler all the way back and probably would have had to walk the train to find it before returning for the coupler.

We got back to the separated cars, and he replaced the broken coupler knuckle. I offered to drive him back to the locomotive, but he said he had to walk the train to check for other issues. He did tell me to wait near the locomotive if I could and when he got back after inspecting the train gave me a copy of the timetable for that subdivision and a tour of the brand-new SD50 locomotive while they built up the air pressure again.

On several other occasions me or other friends have provided rides for rail crews in various situations. Once we were able to source a water supply for a shortline’s locomotive that shut down due to a lack of cooling water. My buddy knew a guy who worked on the local volunteer fire department, so they sent a tanker (as they called them then, nowadays they call them tenders) to fill the locomotive’s water tank.

On a trip out to Nebraska and Wyoming (I did these trips often for years) I was pacing an eastbound UP train along US-30 in central Nebraska and the dispatcher told the train to stop in the next town and “Grab a Pepsi” while they waited for some congestion to clear up.

I needed gas and snacks myself so when the train stopped across from a Coastal station I did too and filled up the gas tank, emptied my personal holding tank and grabbed some snacks. The conductor was just ahead of me in line and had a couple Coca-Cola’s. I said something like “I thought she specifically said Pepsi’s on the radio”. He looked at me funny and then realized I was the goof chasing them for the last 50 miles or so sticking a camera out the window. He got a laugh, and we chatted for a while. He invited me up to the cab and introduced me to his brother-in-law who was the engineer. It turns out he was also a railfan and had chased some of the Alco shortlines in Michigan that I was really familiar with. Pretty soon however they got a green signal, and it was time to leave.

Cardinal Sins not committed:
Occasionally, I would hear something on the scanner and think I had some information that would help the cops responding. In my mind I knew it all and would be able to help. Unless I knew the guys talking, I normally kept my mouth shut, a difficult thing for me. We have all read the arguments about having ham radio gear modified to be able to transmit out of band, and I have had some of these radios that I bought already modified. I have been tempted several times over the years to jump in and tell a responding officer some tidbit, but I would bite my tongue and keep quiet. On my radios that were capable of transmitting on public safety frequencies I would often program in local police or fire channels but if I wasn’t able to program it for RX only would et the transmit to a ham channel.

The only time I reacted to a call I heard on the scanner was once when I was driving in a small town in Wisconsin many years ago and saw a vehicle that was reported as wanted for some criminal act I heard about a few minutes’ prior on the scanner. I called the Sheriff’s Department on my cell phone and told the dispatcher I was an off-duty officer from Illinois and had heard the broadcast and that the car was in front of me. I provided the location as I drove, dropped back as far as I could while keeping eyes on the car and waited for a deputy to arrive in the area. A few minutes later the car was stopped after a short pursuit into a pasture and 2 guys arrested. I just kept going on my way and got a call an hour or so later to fill me in.

Every once in a while we would get a call from a scanner listener that a car or person we mentioned on the radio was seen by the listener. We had a code phrase (“Concerned Citizen”) for them so the guys would know how the info came in. Most of the time it was legitimate and occasionally contributed to an arrest or once, the recovery of a lost dementia patient.

It wasn’t always a good thing though. We arrested a couple of local kids whom we knew (small town…) who were setting small fires so they could hear the fire calls go out on the scanner. One of our guys noticed them showing up or driving by on multiple calls and put two and two together.

Like anything else (guns, hammers, shovels etc.) scanners can be a valuable tool or interesting diversion when handled properly. It can also be a tool of destruction when not. It depends on the user.

Both part one and two are great and I can relate. Although right out of high school I earned my Nursing degree and became an RN and then went back and got my degree in public health I was always a news photographer. I was a Stringer for a local newspaper at first.

Had my own dark room when I was 16 which I guess was around 1971. I had a slide rule dial tunable under the dash. Definitely was not an ambulance chaser. As you know with many fire calls and police calls they are unfounded. As long as we had the radios we knew if it was worth covering, otherwise we just ignored it.

You are correct, in the old days it was nothing like it was today. You didn't have all of these chuckleheads running around with cell phones stepping all over evidence and crunching empty shells under their feet. As scanners came into play, we were still a small group. We had great relationships with the local police.

We would be invited on private property with the promise that we would spell their name right in the caption of the picture or better yet, toss them some 8x10s.

We acted professional, confirmed information, wasn't unusual for a cop to just give me someone's driver's license so I could get all of their information.

As programmable scanners came to be they did not mind that we were listening, many voiced that it was like having an extra pair of eyes, wouldn't be unusual for me to be sitting in my car in the shopping center parking lot just hanging in my catchment area. Cops would always come along and park and talk. They all knew who you were.

If there was a major Bolo they knew there was an extra pair of eyes on a sharp lookout.

No computers, no cell phones, no auto focus camera and everything of course was film, black and white of course.

Brick phones came along I guess in the late '80s, and I remember the Star tac Motorola flip phone, I think that's what it was called and we would use heavy black leather cases and they were nicknamed, the shoe phone LOL.

Of course when 9/11 happened, the Patriot Act happened, things really changed then.

That's when the AH's came along with video cameras on monopods and yep.. stepping on empty shells LOL, the cops knew who the real guys were.

Police Chiefs always know that we had professional radio equipment and was qualified to program it and they could trust cooperation and collaboration, they had no problem that we were listening until of course, anybody could listen on a cell phone, I'll leave that there. LOL

You could always tell the pros, when I arrived on the scene that was extra dicey, gang murder, fatal MVA Etc. You hide your press credentials and you hid yourself like asking a nab if you could stand on their porch and you would get all the photos you needed for the front page and the inside, then you showed up at the scene.😉.

One thing I enjoyed working with the police was once I was full time staff at The Trentonian in Trenton, New Jersey, where I retired on a pension as a department editor, we would put the first edition to bed and then there was a skeleton crew for the second and third edition but we would all go to the Corner Inn, a cop bar in Trenton and then drink with the same squads we had been working the streets with all night.

Great topic. Thanks.

 

[ladn]

You are correct, in the old days it was nothing like it was today. You didn't have all of these chuckleheads running around with cell phones stepping all over evidence and crunching empty shells under their feet. As scanners came into play, we were still a small group. We had great relationships with the local police.

We would be invited on private property with the promise that we would spell their name right in the caption of the picture or better yet, toss them some 8x10s.

We acted professional, confirmed information, wasn't unusual for a cop to just give me someone's driver's license so I could get all of their information.

Brings back fond memories or a simpler, and more professional, era. I had many similar experiences during my photojournalism days.

As you mentioned,

the AH's came along with video cameras on monopods and yep.. stepping on empty shells LOL, the cops knew who the real guys were.

I'll add the YouTubers,"1st Amendment Auditors" and uncredentialed freelancers. These screw ups caused problems for all of us.

 

[Falcon9h]

Really cool story! When you writing the book?

 

[T680]

Scanners and public safety professionals have had a turbulent love/hate relationship over the years. While many public safety professionals (me included) started off by being scanner users, many of these same people have had some serious issues with other scanner users. From so-called “cop-watchers” harassing police while they try to do their jobs to burglars listening in to avoid arrests and those that actively interfere with radio communications to some more innocent guys standing behind the caution tape listening in, the interactions can be difficult.

Not all the time, however, are scanner users the bad guy. Sometimes they can actually be a real help. Here are a few instances I have seen over the years.

Having the AVLS Blues:
Back in the 80’s, there wasn’t the widespread availability of GPS like we have now. Back then if you wanted to track your police cars you needed to install an AVLS (Automatic Vehicle Location System). These usually transmitted a beacon signal that was either tied to some sort of location device (early GPS or even older technologies) or used fixed receiver sites for triangulation.

One town in the south suburbs of Chicago had one of these systems and it transmitted short data bursts on their old dispatch channel, then used for car-to-car and secondary use (as many VHF channels were after most suburbs switched to UHF T-Band in the 70’s). This was not really a problem for them as they used PL for voice traffic and none for the data. The problem arose when the radio shop apparently wired the AVLS system into the radio of at least 2 cars incorrectly, sending the data to the selected channel instead of steering it to the desired channel. Most of the time this wasn’t an issue, but some guys would set the channel switch to ISPERN, the statewide emergency police channel on 155.475.

Now suddenly ISPERN was getting inundated with these data bursts. They would start most days at 3PM and stop at 11PM. Of course, us scanner guys knew what was happening, but we had to prove it to solve it. One of us lived close by and recognized the data bursts as the same used by a nearby town’s AVLS system so we met up down there and staked out the police station. We got lucky the third night and started hearing the data come up on ISPERN, we then were able to pinpoint it to the specific car.

We went into the PD, spoke to the watch commander and explained what we found. He was skeptical but after a couple of us identified ourselves as police officers from other towns he relented and went out to the parking lot with us. We showed him the car we thought it was coming from and sure enough the radio was selected to ISPERN. We shut that radio off and no more data. Turned the radio back on and there was the data again.

It turned out that the officer assigned to that car may have figured out that his location would not be shown if that radio was selected to ISPERN. We were asked not to say anything for a while and the Watch Commander had that radio fixed shortly thereafter. He called a week or two later and let us know that the officer assigned to the car was spending quality time with a girlfriend outside his assigned beat and that that issue was now resolved. We let the State Police district there now what we found, and they were thankful it had been resolved.

Another town way up north had a similar system that they decided to use their town’s Public Works channel for. The problem was they never bothered to tell PW about that. It wasn’t a problem on night shift but during the day PW was torqued off when they started hearing this data, it was strong enough to cover their voice traffic. They had no idea what was happening until one of their employees mentioned it to a friend who was a scanner club member. He asked around and some of us quickly figured out where it was coming from. Eventually PW added PL to their channel and that helped somewhat. As for the relationship between the police and PW, I think it didn’t recover soon enough, I had heard gossip on the grapevine of tensions for several years after this.

Gypsy tow trucks and “Sandra”:
Another user of the GMRS channel we used back in the 1980’s was a gypsy tow truck operation on the North Side of Chicago. Ever hear of the “Lincoln Park Pirates” (Lincoln Towing), infamous for towing legally parked cars or even occupied cars for ransom? These guys made Lincoln Towing look like polite kitty cats. They would talk about jacking cars off the street and falsifying the paperwork to say they were in their contracted lots, hiding around the corner with spotters to pounce on cars parked in or near to the lots and other nefarious activities that would make even a politician blush.

Why would we bother going after these guys? Well, for one, they could swear up a storm. Such foul language would make a Marine quiver. This is a family story so we will leave it at that. Second, they were running a totally illegal operation and preying on people. They openly talked about grabbing cars off the street to claim they were in a client’s lot, how they would break into the cars and steal valuables as well as other illegal activities. Third, they had no license for the radio system and that made us mad.

We were able to find the trucks soon enough, but they were (illegally) unmarked and the license plates were illegible (likely on purpose). A friend who worked for the State Department of Revenue searched state records and could not find any business licenses for them, and (in the days before the Internet became available to mortals like us) we spent hours searching phone books, city records and other records trying to get a hint who they were. We could find the parked trucks occasionally and would see them with a victim, but we couldn’t find their lot or shop.

One point of order here: A couple of us were cops or other law enforcement employees. We had contacts in several layers of the state and city governments, including the regulatory agencies governing towing and recovery companies. They were very interested in these guys!

The apparent patriarch of the family business would call out the name of whom we finally deduced was his daughter by yelling “Sandra” in a very distinctive eastern European accent. She would send them on calls and coordinate spotters working the lots they trolled.

For over a year they defied probability and evaded identification. Many nights were spent by MRG (Metro Radio Group, our CARMA-affiliated GMRS club at the time) members trying to track them down and eventually a year or so later they were found at a former gas station on the far North Side of Chicago.

When we finally did catch up to them, we took copious notes and pictures and even some video. Remember that this was before the days of smart phones, video cameras were huge and expensive, photographs were done with film and voice recording was done in cassette tape.

Some detailed sleuthing and a certain amount of stalking eventually turned up home addresses for the various family members. A few letters sent with incriminating evidence were sent and they were requested to remove themselves from the planet, or at least the frequency. One bright and sunny winter’s day they up and disappeared, never to be heard of again. We never found out for sure if they just moved to another channel or maybe even shut down the business. As far as we were concerned, they were off the frequency and that was all we cared about. Our friends in the state government were sent what we found but we never heard back from them.

Ambulance Chasing:
In the mid 1980’s the 7 GMRS interstitial frequencies sandwiched between the regular pairs were not authorized for any use. While later on (1989) they would become legal for low power use by GMRS licensees and later by FRS users, at this time they were not authorized for anyone. Occasional simplex use would be heard here and there but for the most part they were quiet. Then one day a couple CARMA members started hearing what sounded like car-to-car traffic of a fire department or ambulance service operation on a repeater on one of these interstitials. A few hours of DF’ing found that the repeater was located on a tower in Arlington Hts., across from Buffalo Grove High School. This tower was the site of a high-power FM radio station (WYEN, “Request Radio 107.9”) as well as several land-mobile antennas. One of these antennas was being used for this illegal repeater a couple hundred feet up the tall broadcast tower.

Traffic on this repeater was recorded onto cassette, photos taken and eventually the mobile units were found. They turned out to be a local private ambulance service, using it to chit-chat about the runs they were on and the traffic conditions they dealt with. CARMA members who had contacts in the FCC provided the information collected, including the recordings, photos and activity logs. A few days later the repeater disappeared, never to be heard from again. According to the FCC Field Office in Park Ridge a fine was levied, and the repeater owner was advised to remove the repeater or have it confiscated.

(See Part Two)

I lived in and around some of the areas you mentioned around those times and from what I remember there were several towing outfits like the one you mentioned.