In response to communications breakdowns during the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is asking law enforcement agencies to stop using number codes such as "10-4" for common messages and replace them with "plain talk." What are your police agencies doing? It could be a story.
The agency "cites the January 1982 crash of an Air Florida plane into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River near downtown Washington as one of the first major multijurisdictional events where communications were a problem," Gary Taylor of the Orlando Sentinel reports.
One example of confusing codes: In Seminole County, Fla., a Code 35 signals a shooting, while in Lake County it means a car break-in and in neighboring Orange County it means only a request for public assistance. Homeland Security first started pressing the new policy three years ago, Taylor reports, but change has been slow in Florida where only the Volusia County Sheriff's office has adopted the policy.
Chattanooga police Assistant Chief Mike Williams, whose department was among the first in the country to adopt the plan, told Taylor, "Concerns about prisoners or suspects hearing information are solved by having a dispatcher ask whether the radio is secure before transmitting information, or by use of in-car computers." He adds most codes aren't secret anyway, and many departments even post them on their Web sites. (Read more)
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