Experts Look for Ways to Prevent Hoaxes on Stolen Police Radios

Alarmed by two phony reports issued this week on restricted radio frequencies that led police to believe that fellow officers were in trouble, the Los Angeles Police Department is looking into ways of tracking down or rendering unusable several missing hand-held police radios.

In the most recent incident, on Thursday night, patrol cars were en route to a genuine call for help in Pacoima when a voice on police radios cried, “I’m hit!” Officers anxiously conducted a roll call on the radios to determine whether any officer from the Foothill or North Hollywood divisions was in trouble, and determined that the call was phony.

The hoax apparently involved a stolen ROVER police radio. It followed by one night a similar but far more disruptive incident in the Wilshire Division that resulted in a massive police search for a wounded officer.

In the earlier incident, two dozen officers, two helicopters and special K-9 units swarmed over a neighborhood in the Mid-Cities area after a man using accurate police lingo reported an officer down and in need of help.

Police searched for more than an hour and a half before determining by a radio roll call that nobody was in trouble and that the call was a hoax.

“We hear them on these restricted frequencies from time to time--people with stolen radios--saying ‘hello’ or causing a little mischief, but I can’t recall another case where there’s been this kind of malicious hoax,” said Sgt. Hal De Jong, a radio expert with the department.

De Jong said a scientific investigation unit is trying to determine whether it was the same prankster in both cases. A voice recording of each incident is being sent to investigators, he said.

Meanwhile, De Jong is investigating ways to render the missing ROVER radios--an unknown number of which have been lost or stolen citywide--unusable.

“We think we can engineer some circuitry to be able to lock out the ROVERS that are missing, but we’re not completely sure we can do it,” De Jong said.

Cost ‘Thousands of Dollars’

Sgt. Jay Frey, a department spokesman, said the two incidents “definitely cost the city thousands of dollars,” particularly the Wednesday hoax in which officers from five different divisions responded, as well as Fire Department paramedics and a fire unit.

“The wasted money is important but it doesn’t even speak to the important calls that went unanswered while officers were responding to the scene,” Frey said.

He said serious crimes such as burglaries in progress take a back seat to reports of officers or citizens facing bodily harm.

Frey said that if the prankster is caught, he would face a misdemeanor charge of interfering with police. Only if the hoax causes great bodily harm can a felony be charged, he said.

“Of course, we think that if the public understood how much harm this can do, it would be made a felony,” Frey said.