Radio trackers: Switch to digital transmissions for CPD has undermined quality
CHICAGO (CBS) -- One group of radio trackers said they want to bring their concerns to Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago City Council.
The move to digital encryption was hotly contested for transparency reasons, but some members of the Chicago Area Radio Monitoring Association said they want the Johnson administration to know how the switch to digital has also impacted quality.
Multiple police scanners on different channels running at once likely sounds like a racket to most – but not to George Bliss. As he listened to scanner audio with CBS 2, he heard a report of a carjacking and a police shooting, and a 10-1 call - meaning a police officer is in danger and immediate emergency backup is needed.
Bliss has been a Federal Communications Commission-licensed HAM radio operator for over 50 years. He monitors police radios daily, and he can pick up pretty much anything – when CBS 2 visited he CPD detective channel up, and even CBS 2's own interruptible foldback, or IFB, monitoring and cueing system.
The dissonance is information. But Bliss and others have noticed an audio quality problem.
"Like, I guess, the quality of a bad cellphone call," said Eric Tendian of CrimeisDown.com.
This has been the case ever since the city migrated public safety radios from clear analog dispatch channels to secure, encrypted digital channels in 2022.
The Office of Emergency Management and Communications said "while the switch to digital transmission provides a different sound than previous channels, encryption itself does not directly impact the audio quality of radio transmissions."
But Bliss was listening earlier this month when an officer's garbled call that he'd been shot in the Gold Coast was followed by about seven minutes of confusion.
"Send an ambulance, I'm hit!" an officer said in a garbled radio call after being shot on the morning of Monday, Jan. 8. The officer was shot at State and Walton streets around 4:15 a.m. that morning, while responding to an attempted crash-and-grab burglary at the Prada store about a block away at 30 E. Oak St. in the Gold Coast.
That radio call was followed by about seven minutes of hard-to-decipher confusion over when whether an officer had actually been shot. Dispatchers said, "All officers are OK, no officers shot at?" and, "No officers hurt, correct?" before it was established that an officer actually had been shot.
"There was confusion. There was dropouts. There was garbled language," Bliss said.
Bliss said he and other members of the Chicago Area Radio Monitoring Association want the Mayor's office to know their concerns for officers.
"Their gun has to work perfectly, the squad car has to start when it's 20 below, and the radio definitely has to work," Bliss said. "Police are in a very vulnerable situation, and we can't make it more difficult for them."
But so far, their letters and emails have gone unanswered.
Bliss also wants to know what happened to Mayor Johnson's campaign trail promise to restore some real-time access to the now-delayed world of police radio transmissions.
"I'd like to talk to somebody and explain why I think it's a dangerous situation," Bliss said.
CBS 2 did reach out to the Mayor's office about the distortion concerns, and to ask what ever happened to Mayor Johnson's campaign promises relating to encrypted digital police radio. As of late Friday, there had been far no response at all.