Area scanner buffs face silent channels

The scratchy talk, spoken codes and beeping tones of a police scanner are a lifeline for Rita Daughtery and a cash line for Jim Calderon.

But come May, they will have to find some other way to keep in touch with the crimes and emergencies of Alachua County.

Daughtery and Calderon listen to police radios for two very different reasons, but they are among local scanner buffs who will no longer be able to hear police and fire communications when a new digital system is fully implemented by May.

Only four public groups will be allowed access to the system if they want it - the news media, amateur radio operators, alarm system contractors and neighborhood crime watch groups.

The public at large will not be allowed access, said Skip Manasco, the Gainesville Regional Utilities' attorney.

It will be a loss for Daughtery, who spends much of her time at home because diabetes has left her blind and unable to work.

"I will miss it. It's like cutting another part of me off," Daughtery said. ''I just enjoy it. I enjoy it especially during storms and things like that. It keeps me informed."

Calderon, meanwhile, earns some extra cash by photographing accident scenes involving commercial vehicles. He sells the pictures to insurance companies and investigators.

Without hearing police and emergency communications about dispatches, Calderon won't know about accidents.

"It's going to hurt the business I am trying to build up," Calderon said. "If I hear it on the scanners, I can get there in plenty of time before they remove the vehicles. Sometimes I get there even before they get the victims out."

Most public safety agencies broadcast on an analog system that can be heard over scanners as inexpensive as $150. The channel numbers for the different agencies are readily available from electronics stores, the Internet and other sources.

The new system is digital and is being purchased and operated by GRU. The communications cannot be heard on analog scanners, and no digital scanners exist.

Instead, the equipment needed to hear the communications are radios that must either be purchased or leased, and then programmed with the signals by GRU. Purchase prices start at about $4,000 per radio.

But even if a scanner buff is willing to pay the price, the agencies would not allow GRU to would not program the radios with the signals necessary to hear the communications.

Manasco said Florida law limits access to news organizations, amateur radio enthusiasts, alarm system contractors and neighborhood crime watch groups.

The law deals specifically with installing a scanner in a car or business. But Manasco said GRU's reading of the law is that the Legislature intended to limit the use of scanners for public safety.

"We want to be consistent with what we believe the statute is. Joe Blow citizen won't be able to come in and do it," Manasco said.

"The intent of the Legislature was to keep people from chasing after emergency vehicles. We're going to apply it across the board because these (radios) are portable units," he said.

"We're not going to give them to anybody who's not on that list. We think it's defensible because we think that was the intent of the Legislature. That list is big enough and broad enough."

Gainesville resident Todd Sherman, an amateur radio operator, has a Web site dedicated to scanner issues and state and federal scanner laws.

Sherman said a lot of scanner buffs tune in to the devices in Alachua County but added he has not heard from people who are concerned about a lack of access to the new system.

Overseeing the system is the Radio Management Board, a panel of representatives from the public safety agencies that will use the system.

Sherman said he plans to contact the board about public access to the system.

Cindy Swirko can be reached at 374-5024 or at swirkoc@gvillesun.com.

Contents © 2008 by David Schoenberger