Ohh..What a Night !
Yes I was there, but not as a spectator. Bit the bullet and decided to take the overtime on one of the Special Events Ambulances...74 was my assignment. All was quiet as the cool air kept the riff-raff down to a minimum. Was able to scan the important frequencies while at our post. Had City-Wide 5 and 6 going plus the Main fire, Main-EMS plus of course our two digital frequencies. Prior to this, we had what I would describe as a "roll-call or ra-ra speech" from our bosses. You know the ones..keep vigilant, the world is watching etc. Their was plenty of Federal folks out there with all sorts of radios which I wasn't privy to listening to. I did pop in the UCV though for a quick look. As has been posted MANY times before, the frequencies were all still the same. The digital ones we were primarily on worked great and sounded crisp. Some digital garble to be expected, but I even did a radio check from inside Northwestern Memorial Hospital and was flawless which was encouraging.
Ahhhh, the best part ! As to be expected, all hell broke loose as the fireworks ended. Alot of radio activity on all the frequencies, but then the biggie hit. On City-Wide 5, the "shots fired, shots fired, man down!" came out. If anyone else happened to hear this, it was quite dramatic. I was at Northwestern when I heard all this going down. As some may have heard, 4 people were shot, 1 fatally at Congress & Dearborn, VanBuren & Clark. 1 offender taken into custody as well. Outstanding work by the CPD detail !!! After this was over, they pulled the Special Events ambulances out of the Taste and staged us at Jackson & Plymouth Court. We took runs for a couple of hours until the riff-raff went home. We had all the bosses from CFD and CPD there monitoring the radios. Fortunately. we were able to head in around 1 AM and I made it in the door by 2AM. Hope some of you had it on, it was quite exciting to listen to.