Cell Phones need to be a Life Saftey tool

[Chucky]

I have mentioned this before as a side item but as time goes on am feeling more strongly that in the case of any LE/SO a cell phone should be considered a part of his/hers required gear. I understand that they could and have been misused by some. But the excuse we get is that the company has phones that anyone can get or send calls on. In our situation say some bad hombre comes in shooting and we need to call the cops pronto. First do you really think anyone would open the steel door that keeps people out to let my bleeding butt in?

Second the other nearest phone would require us to stand in the open while placing the call. The video of the guard that was shot and crawled out of harms way and called 50 saved his and others from a certain death. I could go on an on but the choir here knows what I am saying. Not just for armed but anyone that could slip and break their leg or worst at the beginning of an 8 hr shift. Or say a close relative becomes very ill and needed to contact me but has no idea what site I'm at. They trust me to wear and not misuse a 40 cal side arm but not a cell phone. So how and who do we need to convince to make this happen?

[craig333]

Glad I had mine when I locked the company phone, my keys and everything else in the office this morning

[JB diligence]

Mine personal cell is always a part of my gear. Theres some info you don't want to relay over some frequencies, as you never know when our good friend the scanner is tuned into your freq. Also what if you forgot to check the battery and get those first calls, the ones before you finish your mornings coffee.

Mine is also a camera phone, so it's nice to add pictures to reports and dont have to race back to the office/gate. to get the camera.

On a side note, I received an email once mentinoing using ICE (In Case of Emergency) I have placed the letters ICE before some names like family/ close friends in my phone that I would want called in an emergency where if I can't tell the Police or Paramedics be it in a car accident or whatever, heck could even work if I loose my phone too.

[N. A. Corbier]

http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/icephone.asp

Keep in mind that if you use the "ICE" method with your cell phone, you should be keeping that information on the first thing first responders go for: Your wallet.

[tattedupboy]

I agree

When I first began working, I did not have a cell phone, and received all my calls on the company phone. It became a problem, however, because I stand either out in the lobby or out in the parking lot all day, and employees were beginning to complain. I finally got my own personal phone after about a month on the job and I'm glad I did. As a side note, I just found out my girlfriend is pregnant, so whether I'm working or not, it is now doubly important for me to always have a phone handy.

[Chucky]

Mine personal cell is always a part of my gear. Theres some info you don't want to relay over some frequencies, as you never know when our good friend the scanner is tuned into your freq. Also what if you forgot to check the battery and get those first calls, the ones before you finish your mornings coffee.

Mine is also a camera phone, so it's nice to add pictures to reports and dont have to race back to the office/gate. to get the camera.

On a side note, I received an email once mentinoing using ICE (In Case of Emergency) I have placed the letters ICE before some names like family/ close friends in my phone that I would want called in an emergency where if I can't tell the Police or Paramedics be it in a car accident or whatever, heck could even work if I loose my phone too.

While researching this subject looking for precedence to use to argue my case one of the objections by employers were that camera phones could record industrial secrets inadvertently or not. I can understand their concerns. It seems that most of the web sites I went to only are geared to the none LE sector.
I went to cops.com and they are equally divided as to the on the job usage. While some depts mandate and issue cells others are claiming they are a distraction and may cause an officer to miss or not hear radio traffic completely. A police officer that covers my post on weekends was reprimanded for answering his while the manager was near by. He was a little more vocal than I and let it be known that if she did it again it would be his last shift there. A somewhat radical stand but I know how he feels.

He reminded me that in this state as many others you take the oath and are first and foremost a police officer 27/7 and that supersedes anything else you are doing on your own time. Should one or both of my police officer sons working a stretch of Meth Ally in OK get hurt on the job and I couldn't get the message until hours later then you would probably read about me in the papers.

[Andy Taylor]

Glad I had mine when I locked the company phone, my keys and everything else in the office this morning

Been there, done that.

[Eric]

While researching this subject looking for precedence to use to argue my case one of the objections by employers were that camera phones could record industrial secrets inadvertently or not.

Sure that is possible, however there is so much company information floating around on highly mobile laptops and even in garbage dumpsters to cover that one. Can the camera not be disabled? Or the other options?

Cell's today in our business are replacing the 2 way radios because of cost and added conversation security as noted above. Management get a printout each month from the cell company I would imagine, to reign in any abusers.

[acula32]

Phones

I have used my personal cell quite a bit for work. There is no cost as my plan get's night's and weekends free. (most plans do I know). I find that I use mine for sensitive info that I do not want the scanner land to hear, or the volume of radio traffic is high and I do not wish to tie up the airway. I have also used my phone in a few rare places our radios come in poorly.

The phone is a great tool when I am out on bicycle patrol sine I am not near a landline most of the time.

[HotelSecurity]

I have used my personal cell quite a bit for work. There is no cost as my plan get's night's and weekends free. (most plans do I know). I find that I use mine for sensitive info that I do not want the scanner land to hear, or the volume of radio traffic is high and I do not wish to tie up the airway. I have also used my phone in a few rare places our radios come in poorly.

The phone is a great tool when I am out on bicycle patrol sine I am not near a landline most of the time.

Warning to Canadians using cell phones for sensitive information. Scanning cell phone frequencies is NOT illegal in Canada. And the internet has lots of places telling how to cut out the blocking diode of most US made scanners.
In Canada it is now illegal to monitor digital frequences without a license but that's all. (BTW no one seems to know what license is required - it is believed to be a ham radio license).

[Chucky]

Warning to Canadians using cell phones for sensitive information. Scanning cell phone frequencies is NOT illegal in Canada. And the internet has lots of places telling how to cut out the blocking diode of most US made scanners.
In Canada it is now illegal to monitor digital frequences without a license but that's all. (BTW no one seems to know what license is required - it is believed to be a ham radio license).

Although illegal at the time I had my Pro43 early addition worked to pick up cell phones that was before cells went digital and were analog. I know of no scanner that can pick up digital signals. If you know of one I would like to know cause the state police use Nextels now instead of UHF/VHF and I would be interested in getting one.

[Maelstrom]

Although illegal at the time I had my Pro43 early addition worked to pick up cell phones that was before cells went digital and were analog. I know of no scanner that can pick up digital signals. If you know of one I would like to know cause the state police use Nextels now instead of UHF/VHF and I would be interested in getting one.

Do you mean the 800~900Mhz SMR spectrum radios? Uniden has released (here anyway) scanners that are able to track operators on those trunking frequencies (unless they're digtally encrypted of course)

FWIW those old early cordless phones were able to be monitored by SW recievers in the 30Mhz spectrum

[HotelSecurity]

Although illegal at the time I had my Pro43 early addition worked to pick up cell phones that was before cells went digital and were analog. I know of no scanner that can pick up digital signals. If you know of one I would like to know cause the state police use Nextels now instead of UHF/VHF and I would be interested in getting one.

The Uniden Bearcat BCD396T Trunking scanner that I have on the desk beside me right now picks up dogital signals. The Montreal Fire Department operate on digital frequencies.

[N. A. Corbier]

Picking up a digital signal isn't the problem. Its that its really, really, easy to use encryption on digital, since its just an added step to the data processing on both ends.

Nextel, I believe, is encrypted from the phone to the tower, and back again. Not sure of the encryption type or strength, though.

[OccamsRazor]

Haven't we gone over this before?

Your scanner will decode APCO Project-25 standard digital modulation. That's it.

It will not decode traffic with encryption (DES/DVP/Fascinator/Cougar/VSELP/Saville/Baton etc) on top of the P25 signal. It will not decode AEGIS, OpenSky or other digital modes (i.e. the one used in the UK, Tetra).

There are three ways to monitor a Nextel conversation, and you don't even have to use a scanner:

1- Buy a Nextel Service Monitor. You'll need about $20000 and a court order, or be a Nextel tech.
2- Apply, get hired and work for the agency you want to listen to.
3- Stand next to your average Nextel user who's using the device with the speaker ON.

Overall, Nextel is extremely resistant to eavesdropping. The radio protocol employed by Nextel through the Motorola iDEN technology is very complex and would require very sophisticated technology and knowledge in order to eavesdrop over the air. iDEN divides a channel into several timeslots, each 15 milliseconds in length. In order to capture usable information, the particular timeslot must be consistently identified and the voice data would need to be separated from all the other overhead information. If a user data stream could be identified given all the preceding, then the actual voice would need to be decoded from the encoding used by iDEN called VSELP. VSELP typically requires 20 million arithmetic instructions per second running continuously to compress and properly decompress user voices.