Imagine your officers are responding to a multi-vehicle pileup during rush hour. Within minutes, a private towing company appears on the scene, soliciting towing services from drivers. Their presence obstructs emergency vehicles and prevents first responders from efficiently securing the scene and treating victims. Using a stolen radio, the tow truck driver had listened in on real-time police communications with the intent to secure lucrative towing jobs from accident scenes.
That scenario could have been a frightening reality for a New York law enforcement department after a former police officer was accused of intending to sell a stolen police radio to a towing company for $10,000.
This incident highlights the critical role radios play in your department. Even a temporary breach of emergency communications — whether between dispatch and officers on patrol or SWAT officers coordinating a raid — can have serious consequences.
It's critical that you take steps to secure and account for your radios, especially when they're not actively being used for law enforcement purposes. Are you confident that none of your radios have gone missing or been compromised?
Here are some ways you can better manage your radios and keep your officers safe in the field:
Keep all radios in a secure location anytime they're not in use. It's important to remember that your department's facility might not be as secure as you think it is. A radio left unattended on a desk or even a back room can be discreetly taken by anybody with access to the room, including any members of the public who have reason to be there.
To keep radios from landing in the wrong hands, keep them in secure lockers away from open areas, while still allowing the radios to be quickly and easily accessed by the officers who need them.
However you chose to secure your radios, access should be restricted and tracked so the right people can easily retrieve the radios they need and so you know who took them and when. Tracking access also holds officers accountable for what they do with radios in the field since they'll know the radios need to be returned by certain times.
An electronic method of tracking access to lockers containing radios reduces the chance for mistakes or outright omissions in a manual log by recording transactions securely and automatically. It also cuts down on the time officers spend checking out a radio.
After being stolen or going missing, the next worst thing to happen to a department radios is for the battery to go dead. You're probably well aware that a dead radio in the field is about as useful as a sidearm without ammo. However, how secure are the radio charging stations in your department?
You certainly want to keep your radios secure, but what good does that do if they must be transitioned to and from insecure charging stations? Consider moving your charging stations to the same secure area or lockers in which you store your radios. An even better solution would be to wire individual lockers with charging cords so plugging in a radio every time it is checked in is part of your department's processes..
Ensuring the security and accountability of your radios is paramount to safeguarding your officers' safety and maintaining the integrity of law enforcement operations. Take proactive steps to secure and manage your radios effectively, protecting your team and the communities you serve.