West Warwick PD

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coolrich55

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I was curious about W. Warwick's' digital radio system. I had a frequency book from 2003 and listed in it was 156. something for the pd. And it said it was digital. Were they one of the first departments in the new england area to go digital? And what made them so special? Some kind of grant or something? Just seems interesting to me. Thanks for any info.
 

SCPD

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I was curious about W. Warwick's' digital radio system. I had a frequency book from 2003 and listed in it was 156. something for the pd. And it said it was digital. Were they one of the first departments in the new england area to go digital? And what made them so special? Some kind of grant or something? Just seems interesting to me. Thanks for any info.

Actually I think Pawtucket was the first in the state to go digital. Anyway the story behind WWPD getting those state of the art radios back then had to do with a deal the town struck with Sprint mobil phone service.I think it was sprint..it was a long time ago. Anyway they wanted to put up a cell phone tower at a prime location at the high school in town but there were zoning issues. A deal was struck and as part of that deal the cell phone company had to purchase all new radios for the town. So the police went for the most expensive "new digital" Astro motorola radios. The best part of that deal was that the tower structure would ultimatly become the towns with the stipulation that Sprint would have unlimited access to use the tower for their cell phone network. The town rented out all the other avalible space on the tower to multiple phone companies and they make a ton of money off it today. The police and fire repeater antennas are located at the very top of the tower structure.
 
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coolrich55

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That is interesting. Have they been encrypted that whole time? I can imagine back then when they switched over it must have been quite a shock to the average scanner listener. Not like now when everyone's going digital.
 

SCPD

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The freq they were on at the time was 156.150. Yes I was shocked at the time and angry because it was my town and I loved to monitor the goings on in my town. I remember Uniden just introduced the very first digital capible scanner back then the BC250D but it was like $350 for the radio and another $250 for the digital card. But I broke down and purchased one and I was back in bussiness. The sad part of the story comes about three months later when they switched over to full time encrypted mode. I could'nt believe I wasted all that money and all I was able to do with this new technology was listen to Pawtucket PD of which I had little interest in at the time.West Warwick still uses the same system today but the technology is now outdated. They operate the system hit or miss..some cars are encrypted and some cars and portables are not. Headquarters operates the same way, some times they are encrypted and other times they are in the clear.I never could figure that part out.
 
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W1KNE

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Expect W Warwick to switch over to the RISCON system sometime soon.
They will probably remain fully encrypted once there.
 

SCPD

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Expect W Warwick to switch over to the RISCON system sometime soon.
They will probably remain fully encrypted once there.

Well we won't miss much now will we. Any idea which TGID WW FD has on RISCON system?
 
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