Jan. 11--TORRINGTON -- On Christmas Day, an unfamiliar voice came over the frequencies Litchfield County Dispatch uses to send firefighters, ambulances and police to calls in 20 northwest Connecticut towns.
Pretty quickly, the staff at the regional dispatch center figured out they were dealing with a poseur. The transmissions continued, with the man on the other end of the radio identifying himself at different times as a Sharon firefighter, a Watertown firefighter, a Sheffield, Mass., firefighter and a Litchfield firefighter.
He caused ambulances to be sent to non-existent medical emergencies and tried to interfere with firefighters responding to real calls.
The phony transmissions ended Jan. 6, but state police are working to track down the person responsible and have distributed recordings of his radio transmissions in the hope that someone will recognize his voice.
State police Lt. J. Paul Vance said investigators are chasing down leads thanks to tips from people who listened to the transmissions.
"We're making progress, and people have been very cooperative and very helpful," Vance said on Friday.
Dan Soule, the executive director of Litchfield County Dispatch, said the phony calls have not caused any harm, so far. He said Litchfield County Dispatch has not had a malicious interference problem of this magnitude since it was formed in 1989 as a regional dispatching operation.
"You've got people responding to something that's not real when they could be needed somewhere else," Soule said. "You just don't want to put emergency response vehicles on the road unnecessarily."
The broadcasts from the phony dispatcher have hit on towers only in Litchfield County, Vance said.
Soule said dispatchers have sent firefighters and ambulances to the incidents radioed in by the phony because they must treat each incident as real until it is proven otherwise.
Anyone with information about the phony calls is asked to call Western District Major Crime Squad detectives at 860-234-1529 or 860-626-1821 or to email [email protected].
Malicious interference has occurred in the past in Connecticut, and a group of volunteers known as the Capitol Region Malicious Interference Tracking group has helped police track down those responsible. The group helped Wethersfield police track down a man in 1998 who made malicious transmissions that affected police and firefighters in Wethersfield, Hartford, East Hartford, Farmington, Middletown, Manchester, Newington and Rocky Hill.
Bruce Marcus, the owner of Marcus Communications in Manchester and a volunteer with the tracking group, said volunteers employ technology and their own experience to find people who interfere with public safety radios.
"These things have occurred in the past," Marcus said Friday. "Our group has had a track record of identifying this interference. If this persists, we can aid the authorities, both federal and state, in pursuing the perpetrators."
People who interfere with public safety radio frequencies typically use police and fire radios they have bought second hand, or a new crop of two-way radios imported from China. In both cases, people program the radios to transmit on the public safety channels, Marcus said.
The new radios can be purchased for as little as $40 from online retailers and the software to reprogram them is also available online, Marcus said. Listings of the frequencies police and fire departments use are also available online.
To listen to the fake radio transmissions, go to http://www.courant.com/radiotransmissions
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