JoCo-Scanning.info

Grants Pass & Josephine County, Oregon emergency services radio information

Introduction

Due to the nature of emergency services and 2-way radio communications, most agencies have adopted specific codes to identify the calling party, incidents, and situations. It's not always easy to pick up on the style of communications and radio lingo - it takes time and experience to piece things together quickly. As the best way of learning is sometimes by example, I've included some basic radio procedure for the local agencies on this page. If you hear something you are unfamiliar with, check out the Glossary page - it might contain your answer. If you notice any of this information is out of date or incorrect, please let me know by emailing me at kgasso@joco-scanning.info. Thanks!

Phonetics

Due to static and less-than-perfect transmission conditions, most spellings done over radio are done phonetically - in other words, a standard word is said in place of each letter. For example, if a unit were calling in my name, it would usually be read something like "Last name phonetically, George Adam Sam Sam Ocean, first King Adam Mary Edward Robert Ocean Nora". Law enforcement phonetics are generally different from military and amateur radio phonetics.

Grants Pass DPS Police

GPDPS police communications generally begin with the unit's designator (spoken phonetically) and the officer number who is calling or being called. For example, if you hear "2-Adam-85", either dispatch is trying to reach unit "2A85" or "2A85" is attempting to reach dispatch.

The designator describes the unit's patrol area as well as the type of unit. The first number in the unit's designator identifies the patrol section. This number is often dropped in radio communications, so unit "1A66" could be referred to as either "1-Adam-66" or just "Adam-66". Occasionally, the entire designator will be dropped, and you'll hear something like "Charlie-86, I'll be out with 66".

The letter in the unit's designator specifies the type of unit. DPS speaks ths unit's designator letter phoneticaly. Unit designator letters are descriptive of patrol type, vehicle type, rank, or special officer notations.

Police dispatch for DPS has a specific identifier, "100". You will occasionally hear this in conversations when a unit redirects the conversation to dispatch, i.e. "Copy, break, 100 can you ship that call to my MDB?" or in car-to-car conversations when dispatch acknowledges the information, i.e. "100 copies".

DPS does not utilize 10-codes at all. However, several disposition, status, and informational codes are used quite frequently by officers and dispatch throughout their shifts.

Josephine County Sheriff's Office

Josephine County SO communications follow most of the same conventions that the Grants Pass DPS communications follow, for good reason - both are dispatched from the same location by the same group of people. There's a good chance the person you hear working the city frequency at one time through the night will be heard on county later that evening.

County unit designators are laid out similarly to those of the City. The main differences are the location numeric boundaries, the unit types, and the fact that the type letter is not spelled phonetically over the radio.

Dispatch for the Sheriff's office is identifier "300". Just as with the City dispatch, this will occasionally be used in conversation between units and dispatch.

The Josephine County Sheriff's Office shares the same dispo, status, and informational codes as the Grants Pass DPS.

Oregon State Police

OSP dispatch is quite different from the local (City, County) police dispatch. The Grants Pass OSP station is identified by ID 3500, and troopers out of this station have IDs matching - for example, 3518 or 3526. Nearly every transmission begins with the trooper's ID and is ended with with a timestamp. OSP also makes use of what are known as "12-codes" for describing day-to-day activities. Dispositions are also generally entered by code.

Each stop or situation handled by OSP is ended with a disposition code, giving basic information as to the outcome of the situation.