Mystery solved. Yet it beckons another mystery. Seems the switch from Main (unencrypted) Dispatch to a P-Tac (encrypted) TG in Jefferson County was ...... training. Training that also included Fire & EMS dispatch. The other mystery begs the question "what for?" Three letters; DHS. Practically every LE agency in JeffCo were 'playing' a live scenario of .... what? Terrorist attack? Mass Casualties? Civil Unrest? Natural Disaster? This training went on for eight hours ...yesterday and today. But today, they switched operations from the fully encrypted P-Tac 4 (TG 1544) to the partially encrypted P-Tac 3 (TG 1542) where I was able to hear some of the traffic. The chatter seemed to indicate they were coordinating with local Fire/EMS, which were being dispatched to 'incidents' on their 'private' channels.
In the 13 years I've been monitoring JeffCo, I have never heard this kind of day-long training that also involved Fire/EMS. Add the DHS involvement into the mix, and you have to wonder if other counties in WV are doing, or will do, the same kind of training. It may be easy to dismiss this training as routine, but too many people and local agencies were involved ... at the same time. Perhaps other scanners around WV may hear such activity on their local TG's. If so, I'd sure like to hear about it.
