![]() The system as it exists is a “patchwork” of radio towers that the county inherited when individual police departments abandoned the local radio rooms common in the early 20th century and moved the operations to the county’s Emergency Services building in Middletown. Delco dispatch tv#But how the county will close the funding gap for the overall project remains a topic of debate.ĭelaware County got into this position gradually, ignoring or avoiding changing the system as governmental mandates led other counties, including Philadelphia, Chester, Montgomery, and Bucks, to switch their radio systems to frequencies with digital encryption to avoid competing with newer, higher-powered television broadcasts.īecause Delaware County fell behind, its aging system is often disrupted by TV signals from as far away as Boston or North Carolina, when the right weather patterns line up, according to Boyce. ![]() Officials say they are symptoms of a county radio infrastructure that hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, with the potential for disastrous consequences: In 2016, a Folcroft officer wounded in the line of duty couldn’t get his calls for help transmitted to the county’s emergency dispatchers.Īfter years of discussion and study, Delaware County last month received a $4.6 million grant from the state to put toward overhauling the system, the last in the Philadelphia region to use weaker, outdated signals that are often interrupted by television broadcasts or subject to “dead zones” where communication is disrupted.Īdditionally, the county spent about $3 million buying new radios for the roughly 1,200 sworn police officers in the county, according to Boyce. In another hijacking of the aging radio system,two people challenged each other to a fight, successfully distracting police, as intended, away from an area that officers were investigating for drug activity.īeyond impeding police investigations and fire department rescues, these pirate broadcasts run the risk of causing outrage among residents who could mistakenly believe the toxic language is coming from a real police officer. ![]() The transmission was not from an authorized user, typically a uniformed officer or dispatcher: It was from a resident keyed into Delaware County’s emergency radio system using a cheap, handheld radio available online. ![]() A voice spat out racial slurs and warnings, at one point threatening to kill the officer on patrol and his entire family. The call over the police radio in Chester last year came in clear with a shocking and terrifying message. ![]()
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