Can an FBI, DEA, whatever agent in his duty car talk to local/state police dispatchers via radio? Do federal agencies have radio dispatcers?
No. Additionally, local cops in one city, can’t usually talk to local cops in another. Nor can state cops talk to the city/county cops. Many times, they are using completely different radio systems that are not even compatible.
I know of some specialized state agencies in Florida who have a working relationship with the county that involved putting one Sheriff’s Department portable radio in each of their vehicles so that they could talk with the deputies and/or dispatcher if necessary.
Unless they are part of some multi-agency task force, cops from differenct agencies can’t easily talk to each other. To talk to other agencies, an officer (or special agent) generally has to call their dispatch, who then calls the other agency’s dispatch on the phone, who then talks via radio with the other agency’s car.
So, if an FBI agent was following a guy and suddenly realizes the guy is about to rob a bank, he either will get on his radio to talk to his own people to tell local police, or more likely he would just call 911 on his cell? I’m asking because I was watching to Live and Die in LA, I’m not planning a heist or anything.
I think bank robberies fall under FBI jurisdiction. Not that that answers your question.
You’re very correct - bank robbery is a federal crime.
He’d be better off calling 911. By the time he contacted his dispatch, they figured out what he was talking about, found the number for the locals, called them, they figured out what HE was talking about and the troops arrived, the robber would be on the beach in the Caymans. Inter-agency communication is a problem in the best of circumstances. Add some sort of crisis and its all over. Been there, done that.
It’s not like police agencies don’t understand that this is a problem. Agencies are scrambling (I don’t know what that would mean, but reporters always use that word) to find ways to either to interconnect their systems or go over to new systems that all the different agencies can share.
The technical problems are pretty big. But so are what you might call the philosophical problems. Do you use radio technology or cell-phone technology? How do you ensure 100% coverage for forces that have to go to every out-of-the-way corner of everywhere? Who builds all the cell towers? Who gets the permissions and fights all the local groups who refuse to have even a emergency tower in their back yards? What frequencies are available that have sufficient bandwidth? Sufficient carrying distance? What happens when you get close to the border and Canada says that it has a ten-year permission process and certain frequencies are closed? What kind of systems can hold up to use in all temperatures and weathers and use and abuse? What system won’t be made obsolete tomorrow by something far better?
Yes, I knew someone who was working on this exact project. The meetings went on for over a year just to try to define all the issues that would have to be addressed and the expectation was that implementations would take years even with favorable political approval.
I found an article that discusses a county-wide version of such a project, no relation, that gives an idea of what is involved. Now multiply that by number of counties, number of agencies, number of states, number of feds, etc. It’s a mess.
Anyone know how this would work in DC? Off the top of my head, I have seen Capitol Police, Uniformed Secret Service, Park Police, and Metro Police all in close proximity to one another. Can they talk to one another? I know the various fire departments in the area have a problem with this.
Was he following him for a certain reason? Or do you mean he just happened to be behind the guy in traffic and noticed the crime go down.
If the latter, he would likely call 911, and it is up to his personal level of moxy if he decided to attempt to stop the guy all by himself while local cops are enroute. Though Bank Robberies are a Federal Crime, FBI are involved more in the administrative end of the deal, and not with actual street level enforcement.
If the former, then it depends on the purpose of tailing the guy in the first place. It may be beneficial for the agent to observe the robbery (provided nobody gets shot) and continue following the guy for whatever reason he was in the first place. If this guy is some high level terror suspect who they need to follow to catch more terror suspects, then arresting him for the bank robbery might ruin their only lead on a much bigger investigation. (Unlikely scenario, but I think it explains the point)
In my experience working with Federal Law Enforcement, the Federal agency provides comms that are encrypted to the local folks, because there is a possibility of something sensitive coming up (use your imagination to create wildly unrealistic scenarios). Cell phones are, however, also used rather heavily.
Most police radios can transmit and receive on multiple frequencies. I have a brother who is a small-town cop, and he can hear the county sheriff’s deputies and state troopers, as well as their dispatchers. If need arises, he can talk on those channels as well.
They do have a county-wide 911 system, so all the police agencies in the county share dispatchers. In fact, I’m not sure that the city cops and the sheriff have separate channels. The staters are on a separate system, though.
However, I don’t think FBI or ATF or Treasury or any of those agencies tend you have radios in their cars, so they wouldn’t be on any system like the locals. They probably mostly work by cell phone, augmented as needed by the earphone and cuff-mic radio systems I see on TV all the time.
Editing to add: Probably the Federal system my brother’s force is most likely to interface with is the Coast Guard. They have police radios in their boats and helicopters so they can indeed talk to the local agencies when they need to.
It varies. In my experience, I worked for a NYS law enforcement agency and was assigned to NYC. We did not have our own radio system- there was a citywide system used by various city, state and some Federal agencies. The exception was NYPD - they had their own frequencies. But the system I used was run by NYPD and used NYPD dispatchers who had access to the NYPD frequencies, and if I needed an ambulance or backup, they would put the call out over the appropriate frequency. I was on a team that called for assistance once- and everyone from the NYPD to the FBI showed up.
Speaking for Missouri, the local Police, Missouri Highway Patrol, and Sheriff’s departments have a shared frequency designated as “point to point” (155.370). This is used by for example the Warren County dispatcher to talk to the Montgomery County dispatcher. The Warrenton Police cars have the county dispatch frequencies in their radios and vice versa. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (Game Warden) also have that frequency on their radios. The dispatcher also has access to the MHP dispatcher via the Point to Point frequency. They might have direct access to the frequency but I don’t believe that’s the case.
In the St. Louis area there are several shared frequencies designated for special use: Riot Channel 154.7250, Sheriff’s Network 155.730
Federal agencies? No.
You should have added YMMV because around here this answer is incorrect with the exception of the feds. All of the departments around here use scanning radios that not only monitor but also transmit. This includes local, county, and state agencies that operate in this local. For example, if I hear a state trooper in a pursuit I can broadcast on his freq and converse. The scanning feature allows me to listen to all the agencies in the county. But to transmit to any one of them I have to turn the switch to their specific channel. Otherwise in standard mode my radio only transmits to my dispatcher.
For a while there was a problem when a couple of departments went to a trunked system. But that’s been solved by some upgrades.
We cannot hear nor transmit to the feds, though. On rare occasions (like when the Secret Service is in town with a pol) we’ll give them some of our radios so we can communicate with them. But those instances are very few and far between.
Meh, mostly Hollywood fallacy on that point (in my experience, anyway). We had radios, but the traffic had a crypto function so that the average skell (or shit’em, if you prefer) couldn’t listen in to hear that his door was about to get kicked down. However, with the ever-increasing ubiquity of cell phones, I would agree that they are a heavy favorite. The boys (and girls) on the job are just used to using them.