CodeMan
Member
Skip Goulet said:You bring up an interesting issue when you say that having a scanner can get you looks. For many, many years, Odessa had an ordinance on the books that disallowed the use of a "police receiver" in a vehicle. Even the news people had to have written permits to have receivers in their mobile news units. And they tried their best to strictly enforce that ordinance to the point that they went well overboard in doing so, which eventually got them in a lot of trouble. They were so paranoid about it, that if they saw a car with an antenna other than the car radio antenna, they were liable to pull someone over to see what they had. With oil companies using their own two-way frequencies, you saw a lot of company cars with whip antennas, and that caught the cops' eyes, since at the time they were still using low band frequencies. But it didn't change much when they went to high band in the early '60s. One time a guy who had a ham radio in his car (for which he was licensed, of course) had stopped at a red light. The receiver on his ham radio could be tuned to hear the old low band police traffic around here. A cop car stopped next to him, and when one of the cops answered his radio, he heard his voice come back over the guy's ham radio. They pulled him over and saw the big radio and had a fit. He showed them that he was licensed to use the radio, but that didn't satisfy them. They let him know that they said who was licensed or not. So they pried the radio out from under the dash, damaging both radio and vehicle, and smashed the radio with a sledge hammer. He was also cited for 'illegal use of a police radio' inside the city limits of Odessa. He filed suit and won easily and also filed a complaint with the FCC, who pounced on them. But that did little good and it was "business as usual". What got them in really not water was when a guy who was a radio technician for the sheriff's office in Levelland, a small town west of Lubbock, made a trip to Odessa. Since he worked for the county, he had a two-way on the common low band frequency in his pick up. His whip antenna was spotted by an Odessa cop and he was pulled over. When they discovered that not only could he hear, he could talk as well, he was arrested and carted off to jail and the pick up impounded. His one phone call went to the sheriff in Levelland, who called the police chief in Odessa and gave him hell. That got the guy out of jail. But he, too, filed an FCC complaint, and it cost the City of Odessa nearly $10,000 in fines, and they finally got rid of that pesky ordinance.
Yeah its a nono here but hams can get away with it with a little grief at times.. heres the State Statute:
843.167 Unlawful use of police communications; enhanced penalties.—
(1) A person may not:
(a) Intercept any police radio communication by use of a scanner or any other means for the purpose of using that communication to assist in committing a crime or to escape from or avoid detection, arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment in connection with the commission of such crime.
( B) Divulge the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of a police radio communication to any person he or she knows to be a suspect in the commission of a crime with the intent that the suspect may escape from or avoid detention, arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment.
(2) Any person who is charged with a crime and who, during the time such crime was committed, possessed or used a police scanner or similar device capable of receiving police radio transmissions is presumed to have violated paragraph (1)(a).
(3) The penalty for a crime that is committed by a person who violates paragraph (1)(a) shall be enhanced as follows:
(a) A misdemeanor of the second degree shall be punished as if it were a misdemeanor of the first degree.
( B) A misdemeanor of the first degree shall be punished as if it were a felony of the third degree.
© A felony of the third degree shall be punished as if it were a felony of the second degree.
(d) A felony of the second degree shall be punished as if it were a felony of the first degree.
(e) A felony of the first degree shall be punished as if it were a life felony.
(4) Any person who violates paragraph (1)( B) commits a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.