Firefighters driving to work at the Pleasant Street station in Brockton on the edge of
downtown first started reporting interference on their car radios last week.
Then, according to enterprise.com, music started playing over the speakers in the station used for
dispatching fire engines and garbling emergency communications.
“In the station, those speakers are used to alert
firefighter to an incident, and that’s how we get the type of call and
location,” said Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Galligan. “Any interference is a
serious issue.”
Galligan called officer Scott Uhlman, the Brockton Police
Department’s radio guru, and City Councilor Dennis DeNapoli to help him find
the source of the interference.
DeNapoli arrived with a frequency finder, an electronic
device that can track the source of radio signals. They discovered a satellite
dish and an FM antenna on a radio mast directly across the street from Fire
Station 1 at 69 Pleasant St ..
The antenna extended nearly 60 feet in the air and an
unlicensed station was broadcasting on 88.9 MHz, right next to WERS in Boston , DeNapoli said.
The antenna was atop a one-story building that houses
several storefronts, one advertising shipping to Haiti
and another the Cardoso
Driving School
Uhlman said they approached a group of Haitian men hanging
out behind building and asked who owned the radio equipment.
The men did not give a straight answer, but when Uhlman
climbed on the roof with a pair of wire cutters, they quickly found the owner,
he said.
The station was shut down immediately and the next day, the
antenna and radio equipment were gone.
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