Reprinted with permission from the Lewiston Sun-Journal
Originally published in April of 1997

BY MARK LAFLAMME
Sun-Journal Staff Writer

LEWISTON -- Radio enthusiasts, news reporters and even some criminals who frequently monitor police scanners will notice an unusual silence in the airwaves in the coming weeks.

Police and fire departments in the Twin Cities will begin using advanced digital technology when transmitting emergency calls and the new equipment will render standard scanners obsolete.

"What it means is, you won't be able to scan us. All you'll hear is a hiss," said Lewiston police Chief Michael Kelly. "The digital VHF scanners may be available somewhere, someday but they'll be really expensive because it's new."

Police officers communicating with dispatchers or with each other will all be equipped with new radios in their cars as well as portable units. The radios will still operate on the VHF system but analog transmissions picked up by fairly inexpensive scanners will be replaced by the new digital technology.

"It's a lot clearer and you won't have that scratchy transmission," said Auburn Deputy police Chief Richard Small. "It will be a lot better for us."

Officials insist the new system isn't being implemented to deny amateur radio listeners or news hounds a chance to monitor emergency action in the city. Instead, the digitaltechnology is expected to create a safer and more efficient means of communication between officers, firefighters and emergency dispatchers.

Currently, more and more frequencies are gobbling up the airwaves and creating sometimes garbled police and fire transmissions, according to Kelly.

"What happens is, we're out there and, say some of the paging towers or cellular towers will over ride us. Technology in general, it's overwhelming, that's why we're doing this," the chief explained. "Just the noise level is phenomenal. Now we can be isolated from outside interference; We're just trying to clear up our transmissions."

He added that the new consolidated dispatch center handles calls from several area departments which means more and more calls are coming in. When airwaves are flooded with calls and some of them hard to understand, it can cause confusion and confusion in emergency work can be dangerous, Kelly said.

"We made the decision to go digital at the time we were planning for the consolidation," Kelly said. Twin Cities police and fire calls began dispatching through the new communications center, located at the Auburn Fire Department, last November.

Each city paid for the new equipment separately through bond packages, partly because Lewiston's larger police force requires more radios. "It wasn't fair to split it 50-50," Kelly said.

In Auburn, according to Small, several radio repeaters were placed in several strategic parts of the city to maximize the new radio technology.

With the new system, officers working on a detail can keep their transmissions to a particular group without overwhelming dispatchers and other officers. When communications with other departments not using the digital technology is necessary, the new radios can handle those calls.

"We can stay purely in digital but if we want to drop down into analog (the old system), those radios can do it," Kelly said. "The new radio equipment also comes with safety features."

Among other features, the radios are rigged so that a dispatcher can identify an officer who keys his mike without speaking into it, for instance if he is under duress and cannot speak aloud.

"It also has a panic button alarm," Kelly said. "If an officer is down and he can't talk, all he has to do is press a button."

Dispatchers will also be able to use a remote device to signal an officer who may have left his car without a radio. The remote mechanism will activate a cruiser's siren, horn or lights to alert an officer that he is wanted on the radio.

All of these features may conjure up images of large, bulky equipment officers must add to their considerable gear, but in fact, the new radio units are quite compact. That means less space required inside a cruiser, less weight an officer has to carry and less chance of accidents damaging new equipment.

"The radio itself has changed dramatically. Everything is in the microphone, it's much more compact," Kelly said, describing the easily handled equipment. "Space is at a premium right now and this frees up a great amount of space."

Although Lewiston is one of the few agencies in the area to incorporate the new digital technology -- state police use it in some areas and the entire state police force in New Hampshire will soon be making the switch -- Kelly describes it as the way of the future.

"What we're dealing with is, the technology that's presently in place is 1950's or 1960's technology," he said.

And, at least for a while, criminals may have trouble catching up with the new age of police communications, a benefit police said is just an added bonus.

"There are many criminals that carry the portable scanners while they are committing criminal acts. It gives them a heads up," the chief said. Until commercially sold scanners with capabilities to pick up digital transmissions become available and affordable, staying one step ahead of the law will be more difficult: "It's a natural benefit, it's not something we planned on."

The silence of the radios may mean trouble for criminals, but for average people who enjoy listening in on local emergency calls, technology means a muting of a hobby.

"Oh man, what am I going to do now?" exclaimed Louis Dumont, of Lewiston, when he heard about the new radio system affecting the scanner he listens to almost daily. "I've always been big on police work and I'm just fascinated with what's going on in the city."

Dumont said he has enjoyed listening to his scanner and the activity in the Twin Cities for two years since he received the radio as a gift. He'll miss his hobby, Dumont said, but if the new technology helps police and fire officials do their duties, more power to them.

"I understand the reasoning for it," he said. "We'll just have to wait and see when they come out with something that can pick up these transmissions."

©1997 Lewiston Police Department, Lew., ME - All Rights Reserved