I guess it’s been about a month or so since a friend insisted that LF and I take his digital trunking scanner home so we could listen to the Baltimore City Police chatter. Neither one of us had any idea of what goes on in the world of police dispatch and I have a whole new level of respect for what these people do. It’s multitasking to the nth degree. I also have a new level of respect for the police because they get dispatched to deal with everything from a grandson using up cell phone minutes without permission to naked guy walking down the street in the middle of the day carrying a handgun to rotting bodies in vacant rowhomes and just about anything/everything else you can think of.
After listening to the scanner for a while, you get to know the dispatchers voices and their styles. Some dispatchers are rattle-proof and others tend to fumble a bit. I’ve noticed that the really strong dispatchers, at least in the BCP Southern District, tend to work nights. I have a favorite dispatcher and I sit here in awe sometimes listening to how she’s taking care of business. No matter how serious or how absurd a call is, she never flinches. She’s always cool and calm and extremely polite. She seems to get more “ma’ams” than any of the other dispatchers. When she’s working, I feel safer. I want to job shadow her.
I turned the scanner on shortly after 7:30 Tuesday night and tuned into the Baltimore Police Southern District to see what kind of craziness was going on and to see if my favorite dispatcher was working. It turns out my favorite dispatcher was working and the craziness that was going on was a shooting that had just occurred in front of a fire house in Brooklyn Park. I didn’t know until the Wednesday morning news that I was listening to this story unfold.
I started recording what was going on shortly they had taken the victim to Shock Trauma. My favorite dispatcher asks the shift lieutenant (aka 09) information about the victim and then asks if 2100 (aka BPD homicide unit) had been notified. What follows that are requests for vans to transport witnesses, lots of juggling of police officers, and a request to take a family member to Shock Trauma. Foxtrot also chimes in with an update re: canvasing the area for vehicles matching the description of the ones seen leaving the scene of the shooting.
Click here if you want to hear the first five minutes of what I recorded. The rest of the recording (not posted here) is a lot of chatter between the dispatcher, Foxtrot, and police on the ground as they are looking for and pulling over vehicles matching descriptions of the ones from the shooting scene.
Click here for a translation of the BPD 10 codes and BPD units.
Friday, November 21, 2008 at 2: 42 pm |
I haven’t listen in about a year. I did it online.
So, I read your most interesting account and immediately asked my co-worker what that URL was that he gave me, (back before so many upgrades, etc.).
I have a Mac and when I click on “listen” it opens my iTunes and starts playing.
Here it is:
http://66.93.53.30:8000/
First thing I hear is this: “They just cracked his ribs open and are working on him”.
Thanks for the reminding me about this. The police are to be commended for their tireless and sometimes pointless efforts.
Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 4: 30 am |
Sounds very interesting… I am not sure if I would be up for listening since Johannesburg, South Africa where I live is the murder capital of the world.