FCC Investigates Maine Radio Jammer

Local officials’ concerns and news accounts centered on multiple incidents, most recently a July 22 car crash in which a 102-year-old man died. The accident, involving multiple vehicles and multiple injuries, reportedly was followed by jamming of public safety signals, which delayed first responders. “While on scene I had to call dispatch via my cell phone for more ambulances cause I was getting jammed,” wrote first responder Michael Sabine on the Lebanon Rescue Department’s Facebook page July 23. He called for an end to such jamming and warned “not all the time do we have a good signal on our cell phones” at those moments when public safety channels fail. Major Bill King said the York County sheriff’s department isn’t investigating, deferring to authorities like Lebanon Rescue. He doesn’t have any formal reports compiled on the jammer but told us he thinks doing so would be a good idea. He has been aware of the jammer for about a year, he said. Maine amateur radio operator Barry Kray said he has “heard of the jamming for quite some time” but lacks personal knowledge of the incidents. “A rogue radio jammer has plagued the town of Lebanon and a few other surrounding communities off and on since 2004,” according to local officials, the Portland Press Herald reported July 25 (http://xrl.us/bnjm2a). It said the jammer delayed first responders by eight minutes at the scene of the July 22 accident.

The FCC began investigating the Maine jammer in April, an official said. “We are working closely with all appropriate authorities.” Interference in public safety signals while the emergency is ongoing and where the source of interference is unknown is “fairly uncommon,” the official said. The official stressed the urgency of the FCC’s efforts to decipher what’s happening in Maine. The FCC has acted against radio jammers in the past. It fined Kevin Bondy of California $24,000 in June 2011 for “intentionally interfering with the shopping center’s maintenance operations on 462.525 MHz and 467.525 MHz and its security operations on 461.375 MHz and 466.375 MHz” (http://xrl.us/bnjnce). The FCC has authority to issue fines as high as $112,500 for a single act of jamming and said jammers “pose an unacceptable risk to public safety by potentially preventing the transmission of emergency communications” (http://xrl.us/bnkkxw).

At least one FCC member heard news of the Maine jammer. “Jamming of public safety signals can’t be tolerated,” said Commissioner Ajit Pai on Twitter Aug. 5 in response to the July 22 incident. Radio jamming falls outside the purview of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, and the PUC is not investigating the problem, a spokeswoman said.

Lebanon Rescue gave a detailed account of the July 22 car crash involving four vehicles in an update that night on its Facebook page. “Unfortunately as crews were dispatched, someone intentionally was covering the radio traffic of the emergency crews,” Lebanon Rescue said (http://xrl.us/bnkkf3). It said the first unit on scene “could not get through” by radio. Crews tried to call four ambulances but couldn’t, the department said, saying the four and their paramedics were delayed “for several minutes” due to the jamming. One factor that may have stopped the jammer was a tracing advisory crews issued upon realizing they were being jammed. “Sanford Dispatch read the FCC warning and advised that the trace capabilities were turned on, and the interference came to an immediate stop,” the department said. Lebanon Rescue said it would immediately ask the FCC for help, following up on earlier concerns about intentional jamming.

"Our dispatch is our lifeline,” Art Hsieh, former president of the National Association of EMS Educators, told us. Jamming occasionally happens by accident among first responders but “normally civilians don’t have access” to these channels, and the possibility any do in Maine is “alarming,” he said. He sees few technological solutions to such jamming problems, he wrote on the first responder website EMS1 on Aug. 7. The Maine jamming incidents “should promote the development of procedures that create redundancies even when systems are functioning normally,” he wrote (http://xrl.us/bnj73v). “Many of us receive our dispatch information via multiple devices, so perhaps a couple of systems can be developed to facilitate better two-way transmissions during the evolution of an incident.”