Teens Taunt Police with Pilfered Radios

June 20, 2000 

AMHERST, Ohio -- For nearly five hours, a gang of pot-smoking teenagers allegedly taunted police over a pair of stolen two-way radios, calling the officers by name, cursing at them, threatening them, and bragging that they'd never get caught. 

"You're never going to find us," one of them bleated across the emergency channels, police said. 

They were wrong. It took harried police from Amherst and Vermillion most of the night to track down the teens with the help of a local ham radio operator. But all six youngsters are now in custody, charged with a raft of offenses under the state's juvenile delinquency act, including theft and telecommunications harassment, Amherst police spokeswoman Barbara Hudson said. 

The alleged obscene and abusive tirade began around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, and it couldn't have come at a worse possible time for police in the two communities at the edge of Lake Erie which share an emergency communication network, Hudson said. In Vermillion, police were stretched to the limit patrolling the town's annual Fish Festival, a celebration of the harvest on the nearby lake. In Amherst, most of the officers were fanning through the village of 14,000 looking for a robbery suspect who was later arrested, no thanks to the teenagers, police said. 

In both towns, it was essential that communications between police not be interrupted, Hudson said. 

But the six boys, all between 14 and 16, had a different agenda. 

Earlier, one of the youths had stolen three hand-held, two-way radios from the municipal Public Works Department, where he had a summer job, authorities said. 

He had brought two of the radios to the home of a friend, and in the basement of that house they began their pirate broadcasts, Hudson said. 

"They were calling the officers on duty by their last names," Hudson said. 

At one point, one of the boys threatened police. 

"I see you, 104," he said, rattling off the call number of a patrol car. "I have you in my scope." 

Ham operator to the rescue.

Frustrated, police turned to the Detroit office of the Federal Communications Commission, but it did not have the equipment needed to trace the broadcasts and would not be able to get it there until early the next morning, Hudson said. 

Then a local good Samaritan with a ham radio offered his services. 

By about 2 a.m., Todd Dunlop had traced the broadcasts to a basement recreation room in his own neighborhood, Hudson said. 

A short time later, police knocked on the door, waking the sleeping grandmother of the teenager who lived there, and got permission to search the house, Hudson said. 

They found the youths and two of the stolen radios, and later recovered the third at the home of the teenager who had allegedly stolen it, Hudson said. 

Police threw the book at the boys. 

"They jeopardized the safety of police officers for about five hours," Hudson said. 

In addition to theft and harassment, the teenagers were also charged with possession of marijuana and disruption of public services. 

They remained locked up this afternoon in the Lorain County Juvenile Detention Center, Hudson said.

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