Ever since police officers started carrying radios, there have been radio related problems. One problem is “keying the microphone”: basically, pushing the talk button on the microphone and blocking other people from using the channel, or stepping on other people’s transmissions.
Sometimes this is an accident; you shift a little in the seat of your squad car and accidentally hit the button. Sometimes, though, especially in the New York Police Department, it isn’t an accident:
At least six officers have been punished since 2012 for such conduct. The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, described one case in Brooklyn in which two officers “who keyed over their sergeant” in the last year were each docked 30 vacation days and put on disciplinary probation. “That got their attention and others’ too.”
Officers have also been known to “whistle or quack like a duck to show their disdain for whoever preceded them on the airwaves.”
The NYPD’s radios are assigned to individual officers, and transmissions can be associated with a specific radio, but this hasn’t deterred the conduct. To be fair, some of it could, possibly, maybe be user interface issues:
“I showed them my memo book,” Mr. Padilla said. “I was in traffic court. Maybe it happened while I was turning the radio off. Sometimes you press the key while turning it off.”
Mr. Padilla works in the 33rd Precinct, under Inspector Joseph Dowling.
The inspector has a reputation of being a hands-on boss who is a frequent presence on the radio, often directing resources from the streets himself.
“He comes on the radio and people start clicking,” Mr. Padilla said.
But other than open disrespect for commanding officers, does this matter? Yes, it does:
Sometimes it happens during car chases, when officers have been known to try to drown out any supervisor who might call off the pursuit after concluding it is too dangerous. A number of microphones were keyed on an April night in 2008, for instance, as police officers chased a gunman in a stolen Consolidated Edison van near Yankee Stadium, one police officer recalled.