FEMA pushing out law enforcement radio codes

[Newsjock]

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3752049

In Washington, DC, if a police officer says 10-50, he or she is talking about a car accident. Over the border in Montgomery County, Maryland that same code means an officer needs help.

And that's why the federal government says its time to adopt a common language, plain English.

Radio codes are a second language in public safety circles, but the Federal Emergency Management agency says there's no room for misunderstanding in a national emergency.

So it's ordering police and other departments to phase out their code-speak and start talking in plain English by next September, or risk losing millions of dollars in emergency preparedness money.

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[The Traveler]

1. Huh?

The purposes of radio codes are essentially "noise reduction". Number codes are easier for the human ear to pull out of static and background noise than words. Jeeze ... don't these guys ever look at the basics?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. Actually the studies from many

big departments have been leaning towards plain language for quite a while.
especially since the advent of scrambled trunking systems

[SpiralHawk]

6. "Scrambled trunking systems"

just needed to see that in print again -- sounds so cool.

I liked the codes years ago when I was a volunteer firefighter. Made things short and sweet. What they hell, there was usually some kind of fire or incident going on, better to be in action than talking about being in action.

[The Traveler]

11. Really? That surprises me

"Falcon 305" comes through the shit a lot more clearly than its translation, which is roughly "I think I just stepped on my dick." What good does scrambled trunk lines do for ya when signal is weak and background noise is high? I dunno. Maybe I am just old fashioned.
:shrug:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

12. Scrambled trunk lines are like cell phone lines,

only clearer... signal strength is supposed to be the same everywhere and background noise is supposed to be reduced with the auto squelch programs.
I don't know.
I am retired.
Seemed to me VHF-hi worked just fine, but what the fuck do I know?

[The Traveler]

13. I hear ya, man.

5 by 5, if you'll pardon the expression. ;)

This stuff usually works better in the marketing demonstration than it does in the field, methinks.

[hootinholler]

16. No they're digital...

So the carrier strength doesn't matter if it can be detected. No static, just signal. Like HDTV, you can either get it or not. The problem is they're line of sight, so you have quite a few shaded areas in rolling terrain and need more towers than FM.

The feature set is incredible. The IC can assign private channels to different aspects of operations on the fly. i.e. the nozzle man has a private line to his pumper operator, etc.

-Hoot

[The Traveler]

17. Nah, man

If the bit error rate is too high, you start essentially losing frame sync and the demodulator doesn't know how to D/A the samples in the frame correctly ... Digital helps, sure ... effectively more sensitive than analog.

The routing features you describe are, indeed, way, way cool.

[pinniped]

2. Pretty lame to threaten them with the loss of those millions.

.

[Daphne08]

4. I predict that FEMA will have a fight on its hands over this!

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. Hate to ask a silly question -

.
.
.

But why not just standardize the number codes?

or is that just too plain simple?

:shrug:

[LeighAnn]

7. Would Never Work

Sorry, but that makes too much sense.

[Spinzonner]

15. How will you know whether someone is using the new codes

or the old codes by mistake. Or what if someone gets confused between the two, or hasnt learned the new ones.

Too much opportunity for error and miscommunication.

Why not use a language everyone already knows and won't have to be (re)taught and is usually unambiguous (enough): English

[qnr]

8. Hope they don't outlaw OPSIGs, I'll have to find a new nick/username

and I've had this one since BBS days in 1981.

[preciousdove]

9. Perhaps FEMA employees can't remember them. n/t

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. There are a LOT of them. Even in some metro

areas they vary, and PD, FD and EMS have codes which mean different things.

an example I remember...

for the FD a 10-99 was no smoke showing on arrival
for PD and SO a 10-99 was a jail break

there was a fire across the street from the youth jail, the FD dispatcher repeated accidentally on the PD/SO radio...

"101 (which was a valid unit number in the PD) reports 10-99 at County Youth Correctional"

Imagine the amusement which ensued.

[genieroze]

14. What don't police etc... have a nationwide common code.

I have a scanner and it's real easy to find out what your police codes are anyway but lets make it easy for the freepers to understand because they are too stoopid to look it up.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

18. The 10- codes should be standardized, NOT abandoned.

FEMA scares me more than any other organization- their power goes far beyond what most people know about. I have no idea what's on their tiny little minds on this one, perhaps other than to purposely break down the communications of the emergency services and increase the general confusion.