Police Radio Prankster

[TripleDigitRide]

Police Radio Prankster Endangering Lives - NewsChannel 5.com - Nashville, Tennessee -

By Brent Frazier

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. - Police officers are not laughing at a practical jokester whose phantom voice has cropped up at least six different times.

The department's upper level managers confirm the man is already responsible for getting the wrong person arrested. They fear someone is going to get hurt.

Derek Hawkins, 25, of Cookeville, was a passenger in a car that was stopped just before 2 a.m. on February 4. Cookeville officers reviewed both Hawkins's and the driver's criminal pasts.

Cookeville Police admit Hawkins was handcuffed, albeit briefly and detained for no reason. Officers in the field were told via radio that Hawkins was wanted out of Overton County, on a warrant for violating probation.

"He said ‘no, you're crazy. I've never been in any trouble in Overton County. I don't go to Overton County," said Debbie Lee, Hawkins's mother.

Derek Hawkins died the following day in an unrelated scenario. His mother found him dead on the couch in the early morning hours, and she is currently awaiting autopsy results.

Meantime, the circumstances that got Hawkins falsely arrested are concerning to Cookeville police.

"Clearly, this has to be someone who has access to a two-way radio and has our frequency enabled on that device," said Captain Nathan Honeycutt, public information officer for the Cookeville Police Department.

Honeycutt admitted pinpointing the suspect will be challenging.

Dispatchers see nothing identifiable when an officer radios in, and police said tower tracking is useless, since all police radio traffic filters in and out of one central spot.

He also admitted the person might be in possession of a stolen police radio.

Honeycutt said difficulty will not stop investigators from pursuing the suspect and criminal charges. He said the man behind the phantom voice is breaking not only state law, but federal law.

Cookeville police have also implemented a radio reprogramming of base station radios, the department's repeater and mobile and portable radios the officers use in the field. Honeycutt said the roughly $2,000 maintenance should lessen the chance of an unauthorized radio transmission.

Derek Hawkins's mother wants the prankster caught and arrested.

"He needs to sit behind the bars to see how funny it really is," said Debbie.

[Guest Glock23ForMe]

People are extremely stupid these days....

[Humble]

Police Radio Prankster Endangering Lives - NewsChannel 5.com - Nashville, Tennessee -

By Brent Frazier

<snip>

"He said ‘no, you're crazy. I've never been in any trouble in Overton County. I don't go to Overton County," said Debbie Lee, Hawkins's mother.

Derek Hawkins died the following day in an unrelated scenario. His mother found him dead on the couch in the early morning hours, and she is currently awaiting autopsy results.

<snip>

Uh... what? I'm sorry, but something doesn't pass the sniff test. That is a whopper of a coincidence. Seems presumptuous of the writer to classify the death as 'unrelated' before an autopsy has been performed.

I wonder if we will hear a follow-up on the results?

[LagerHead]

They should contact some of the Military Intelligence units in the National Guard. Many of them have direction finding capabilities that can pinpoint a transceivers location very precisely. Then they can call artillery on his position. Or send the cops. Whatever.

[Bubba0031]

All of our radios whether they are public service or public safety display the radios serial # when they transmit. We also have the ability to "kill" a radio remotely if an unauthorized person obtains one of them.

Edited April 27, 2010 by Bubba0031

[Tobashadow]

All of our radios whether they are public service or public safety display the radios serial # when they transmit. We also have the ability to "kill" a radio remotely if unauthorized obtain one of them.

Your in Oak Ridge according to your location under your name and they use a Motorola Type II SmartZone trunking system so yes jumping on your system there would be risky but not impossible.

But

For systems not using trunking, nothing more then ordering a radio that can do the proper freq and can use PLL tones to activate the input on the repeater would allow you to cause havoc on a system and there is little you can do other then implement a scrambling system in hope they don't figure it out or change PLL tones which will only slow them down unless they are a moron and don't have the brains to cycle thru the PLL tones till they find the working one.

I knew one person that decided they where going to play with the police freq's but did not understand the PLL system and i sure as heck did not tell him it required one to get on the repeater and he lost interest quickly when it didn't work.

He did tho decide to mess with the Ham's with it and found out quick us Ham Op boy's when provoked are motivated and do signal tracking for fun.

[Guest (BH)]

Hmmm, unrelated death, eh? I'll be interested to see what that autopsy turns up.

I mean, I doubt the cops did anything to physically harm the guy, but that's mighty fishy...

[Dropkick Murphy]

About 5 years ago I was working at a PD in California. Some knuckle head left his radio at a convenience store, and some kid got a hold of it.

A few days later, after we all forgot somebody lost their radio, some kid is on the radio yelling into the mic. He's telling us there is an officer down and he is using his radio to get help for him. We were all driving around for about 10 minutes listening to this kid telling us how our buddy was bleeding and he was dying. Scared the hell out of me.

Finally somebody remembered the radio was stolen and we accounted for everybody via cellphones.

A few days later there was a high speed chase that ended at a college. BG ran into a classroom full of kids with a baseball bat. Same damn kid got on the radio during that time and was just yelling as loud as he can into the mic. We had to shut them off. Luckily a janitor whooped the BG's ass inside the classroom before we got there (We gave him an award. It was awesome).

After a few days the radio battery went dead, and he couldn't charge it. Before then it had never crossed my mind that you could render so many officers useless with a little trick like that.