Someone posted and/or made a submission that the Stanislaus NF law enforcement net is on 171.1375. This is Channel 30 on NIFC's National Air to Ground list. I wonder if someone misread their scanner display as 171.1375 looks quite similar to 171.7875. The .78 might look like .13 if a very quick look is all a listener was able to get of a scanner's display. Certainly an 8 can mistakenly seen as a 3. Many of the frequencies on the air to ground list are used in some areas of the country for forest, park, BLM district or National Wildlife Refuge repeater nets, so this reported use on the Stanislaus is not improbable.
Unfortunately, all this discussion about the various frequencies in use for law enforcement by the Forest Service will likely lead to encryption. There is a requirement that handhelds purchased by the 4 federal public land management agencies have digital capability and this requirement has been in place for several years. I heard a Forest Service law enforcement unit testing a digital radio at least 10 years ago. I was the impetus for my purchase of a PRO-96 in the fall of 2005. That would indicate that at least LE units had digital capable radios after new narrowband equipment was purchased before the narrowband mandate became effective.
The reports of this new LE repeater system are recent, indicating it has been recently installed. If that be true, I think both digital and encryption capability have been built in. The only reason I can think of for not using both of these from the get go, is that some mobiles and handhelds are in use that don't have these capabilities. This does not match up with my 2004 or 2005 observation of a LE officers test of a radio in the digital mode. Perhaps there aren't enough repeaters in place to provide adequate digital coverage. Some coverage was lost as a result of narrowbanding and additional losses are likely to occur if digital modulation is used.
The following is a detailed discussion of law enforcement dispatching by the USFS in Forest Service Region 5, which covers all of the National Forest land in California with the exception of the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF and Rogue River-Siskiyou NF land bordering the Klamath NF along the CA-OR boundary. I've provided this discussion as it is relevant to the future of the various law enforcement radio networks that are the subject of this thread. This is "optional reading."
I read a rather obscure document of notes by a committee that met several years ago to evaluate the consolidation of dispatch centers in Forest Service Regions 3 and 5. Region 3 covers Arizona and New Mexico and the discussion mentioned that having one dispatch center in each state was being evaluated. None of the dispatch centers in Region 3 are operated on a continuous, year long, 24 hour basis. All of this region's centers are interagency, with partnerships with the National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) participating in all or a portion of each comm center. Due to the jurisdictions on National Parks the NPS provides its own LE/admin dispatching and 24 hour coverage, sometimes linking smaller parks to the larger ones whose dispatching workload and staffing is greater. Fire and aviation dispatching for NPS units are functions handled by the interagency centers. No one from that region expressed the desire to do law enforcement dispatching. It was mentioned that the same viewpoint is shared in USFS Region 4 (Intermountain) and Region 1 (Northern). It was not mentioned if the same perspective is shared in USFS Region 6 (Oregon/Washington) and Region 2 (Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska,Kansas and most of Wyoming), but if I had to guess it would be similar. Most of the comm centers in Region 8 (southern states) and Region 9 (northeastern states) are already consolidated, most on a entire state basis in cooperation with state natural resource agencies. Region 10 (Alaska) is about as different as is possible in one agency and I haven't picked up what their viewpoint may be.
Region 5 has characteristics other USFS regions don't share or don't have in the quantity that exists in California. These being: 25%+ of the recreation in the National Forest System of 9 regions, the heaviest fire workload (half the USFS fire management budget is spent here), a very high LE workload (Regions 8 & 9 also have significant LE workloads in spite of having a small amount of NF land), more human caused fires than the rest of the western regions and more intense resource conflicts and special land uses than the other regions. I worked in Regions 3 , 4 and 5 (in that order) and when I arrived in Region 5 I found many programs and issues I had not seen to that point of my career. As you might expect recreation, law enforcement, fire and civil liability is more intense than the other two regions of my career. There is a higher level of USFS response to "all risk incidents" in California as well. Traffic accidents, hazmat and medical calls elicit USFS responses here and especially on the 4 southern California National Forests as a result of 3 factors. First, and foremost, all risk incidents may involve civil (tort) liabilities. I think it safe to say that Region 5 has more claims and lawsuits for accidents and injuries than anywhere else in the Forest Service. Road, developed public facility and trail construction and maintenance as well as issuing permits for special land uses (resorts, dams/reservoirs, powerlines among a long list) result in lawsuits with engines and patrols often dispatched to evaluate potential liabilities where a USFS investigator might be necessary. Region 5 has, or did have while I was working, a system to develop a cadre of qualified accident on call and concurrent duty accident investigators on each National Forest. I was assigned to be in it. Second, a moral responsibility to provide public assistance when USFS resources are the "closest force." Lastly, as a mutual aid partner with fire and law enforcement departments. As a result a very proactive, experienced and well trained dispatch staff is needed for the "non-traditional" services the USFS provides in Region 5. The principle of "necessity is the mother of invention" is how this developed.
These divergent characteristics is likely the reason Region 5 has a different and completely opposite viewpoint, given that every USFS dispatch center was already providing law enforcement dispatching as well as the traditional administrative and fire dispatching. Several dispatch centers reported that they turned nighttime control of their nets over to a 24 hour center, such as the Angeles and federal interagency comm center in San Bernardino. When I first arrived on the Inyo NF in 1988 the nighttime coverage consisted of a tone alert system in the Bishop PD dispatch center, then a system where one dispatcher took a UHF radio home (it controlled the link to the Inyo's remote base), handing the net over to the Angeles and finally handing the nets over to the San Bernardino at night. I'm not sure if there are any such centers in North Ops.
In the committee's notes there was some discussion of developing a couple of 24 hour law enforcement comm centers, one in the north and one in the south. Presumably these centers would only provide LE dispatch, however, the San Bernardino center is handling LE dispatching for the San Bernardino NF; three NPS units, Joshua Tree, Mojave and Death Valley; and the BLM's California Desert District as well as the traditional services for each. It would benefit the fire and admin functions on units that presently don't have 24 hour dispatching to have two centers in the state that could. It would require some work to tie the nets of each park, forest, district and refuge that are partners in existing centers into those centers as well as tying in the new USFS law enforcement nets as well. The National Park Service and California State Parks have formed a partnership and now have a unit called "Redwood National and State Parks". NPS protection rangers use the state's VHF radio net for its North Coast Redwoods District.
The future of the Region 5 law enforcement nets is subject to speculation and good listening and reporting are needed.
Lastly, don't forget the BLM California State Office, all three districts (Northern California, Central California and California Desert) are building a statewide LE net of their own. The frequency of that net is 166.7500. I don't have any information on it other than I think the California Desert District probably has the best coverage and new repeaters in the other districts are being installed.
