It’s for a very good reason, but we’re losing a bit of our culture when it’s gone.
Anyone who ever played cops-and-robbers as a kid, listened to a police scanner or watched TV shows such as “Dragnet” or “Adam-12” knows that “10-4” and other codes beginning with 10 are radio cop-speak for “OK,” or “officer down” or “burglary in progress.”
But now it looks as if it’s over-and-out for 10-codes.
The Virginia State Police and some local police departments are dropping them and switching to plain English.
Among the codes that have been shelved in favor of their English translation are the mundane 10-23 (arrived at the scene), the blood-pumping 10-47 (chase in progress) and the grim 10-82 (dead body).
The change comes as the Homeland Security Department presses local law enforcement authorities to improve communications so that different agencies can work together without confusion during an emergency.
yes Dragnet, but mostly Highway Patrol
There isn’t a standard 10 code. There are differences between agencies, although many are the same. The use of encrypted digital radios will just about put the police radio scanner enthusiast out of business. It will take years for the roll out. It’s a mess now with both UHF and VHF, along with various trunking technologies. For delicate matters many agencies will use cell phones.
Actually there is a standard 10 code, it’s called the APCO 10 code, unfortunatly most departments use a varient and not the official code which creates this mess. Radio technology has improved sufficiently (the 10 code was developed way back for low band police radio) adn officers are used to radios enough that you can understand plain english well enough to avoid needing 10 code for clarity.
It’s true that most delicate matters are handled by cell phone these days so nothing juicy is said over the radio but it’s not my experience that radio communication is being encrypted. It’s going digital for sure, but at least in Minnesota the digital is unencrypted for everything except a few drug enforcement/tactical channels. Spend some money for a digial scanner. You’ll find them much nicer to use than analog scanners, you can hear clearly from a much greater distance.
I think they should switch to HTTP error codes, like saying “404” when they arrive at a house and no one is home.
Ben (#3) pretty well has it…. The major issue is that not every PD uses the same codes…. My guard service uses “Signal 38” for “Everything’s cool here.” The Township PD use that for “A Drunk”…. Every time my guys “announce” their status….
Most of the codes that are used around here are based on the City’s – and many of those are more than 50 years old. This is OK until somebody meddles. Many decades ago I was active in the County’s Civil Defense Auxiliary Police, and our unit used to “take over” a little town nearby during an annual Church Festival. We’d take care of the city (really busy – on Saturday night, people would go over to the hotel to see who rented the room) and the PD and County Sheriff would work the Festival.
The guy in charge of our unit decided that we needed new codes for things like “send a tow truck”, and passed out a list. OK, fine, I can read, and I was working the radio that night. The guys in the field barely knew how to push the “talk” button anyway…. About an hour into the shift, one of my guys hollers “SIGNAL 12!, SIGNAL 12!”
Wouldn’t have really mattered, except that the meaning of the City code for Signal 12 was “HELP! ASSIST AN OFFICER! SEND EVERYBODY!” Our meaning was something like “send a tow truck”….
He was excited enough that I had to ask: “Nate? OUR Signal 12 or the Cities?!” All of my guys knew the City codes, and falling back in an emergency wouldn’t be a surprise (which is also why the HSD wants to change).
He wanted the tow truck…. Whew….
(The State Patrol really gets me when I monitor them. “Signal 6” is a Traffic Crash around here. For them it means “reference my last message.”)
The old codes have two purposes: Brevity, and Precision. The former works fairly well, but the latter is a major issue when there are multiple departments involved. It can also make you crazy. I used to visit a small town in western South Carolina for the former day job. I generally brought a scanner along for fun. Both the City PD and County Sheriff’s Deputies seemed to average about one English word for every five or six codes. Fortunately, they were close to APCO’s standard, but you had to listen rather carefully at times….
Once in a while they’d drop to English. The best one I ever heard was something like: “Captain? Some guy came in here with a box full of kittens just now. The box and the kittens are still here, but we can’t find the guy….”
Regards,
Stu.
Very off topic.. (sorry!) but…
When I worked for the Coastguard I was lead to believe the phrase “OVER and OUT’ made no sense (to us Brits anyhow) .
‘OVER’ meaning – I’m finished and expect a reply.
‘OUT’ meaning – I finished and don’t expect a reply.
Whats cop-speak for “Porkchop Sandwiches”?
I rather use Q codes instead of 10 codes.
Phil (6) – You’re nearly there.
It’s OVER – message Over
OUT – Conversation Over.
So “over and out” is “That’s all I was saying, talk to you later.”
I’m a brit too, and it’s always made sense to me 😉
What’s the 10-code for “need more donuts”?
Okay, the donut humor is getting a little old…
As the pressure mounts for police agencies to work closer together, and the standards continue to drop for minorities, this type of communication will fall to the side. That and the fact that more and more of the frequencies can be used digitally and the conservation of air time isn’t such an important issue.
Most of the officer ans security personnel I know have and use a private cell phone to communicate with their dispatch or comm centers when the communication involves anything prolonged.
Also as we continue our growth towards Globalization, they are going to want to bring the police agencies under one central control. Having different communication codes for these agencies will only make that more difficult. Pretty soon the Democrats, or Neo-cons, will call for the uniting of all US police agencies under one central governmental agency. This will will be for the reason of efficiency or economy. They tried once during the early Clinton years and they’ll try it again. We must start preparing for the North American Union, times marching and so are the Globalist.
9. But the use of “over and out” is unnecessarily redundant. If you say “out”, it is understood that the message is over. My military experience is #6.
RBG
9. Keeping this little bit of trivia alive:
In fact, what am I thinking? “Over” doesn’t mean “the conversation is over” or “the message is over.” It means, “over to you to speak to me”
That’s why you’d never say, “Over and out” because it would mean “over to you to speak to me but I’m outta here.”
RBG
One of the problems that came to light after 9/11 was the inability of different teams to communicate. That lesson is the same if even though the radios can contact each other, they speak different languages. Often on the radios, there is a lot of background noise and static. Concise, easy to understand codes make communication easier then detailing in English.
The danger is when some idiot, (see #5’s post) tried to reinvent the wheel and make up his own codes. The result may be very under or even overwhelming.