Radar Gun Confiscated!

[JLR80]

What is the name of your state? Illinois

This is just my luck..go figure. I have a buddy who does some work on police equipment and he loaned me a police radar unit that was taken from an old squad and recently replaced with new Ka band equipment. I was playing around with the unit (consists of radar gun and control box) for a few days clocking motorists speed just for kicks, had it mounted on the front dash of my truck, and I happened to get stopped for speeding 35mph in a 30 mph residential zone.

The officer took my license and insurance, ran the information, and then inquired about the radar gun on the dash. I presented my valid amateur radio license just to cover my but (I also have a police scanner and other ham radio gear in the truck which he asked a number of rather sarcastic questions about) and when asked about the radar unit I told him "I'm doing the same thing you do, but I'm not writing people tickets."

To make a long story very short, I received a written warning for the speed violation, but the radar gun was confiscated on the grounds of "suspicion of impersonating a police officer." Apparently there has been a gentelman in this area who has supposedly been impersonating a police officer, possibly tried to lure a young woman into a remote area, and has not yet been caught. Apparently, I am/was a suspect for having a radar gun? Did I really do anything wrong and is this legal? Are these guys just looking to add to their inventory? A phone call to the supervisor is unreturned as of this evening.

I can't find anything in the Illinois state statutes online regarding possession of radar guns by private citizens as being a moving violaiton or otherwise against any state laws. I should probably add that I was professional and polite with the officer, and I was not otherwise hostile or aggressive. Needless to say, he was what I would consider to be very rude in his demeanor and handling of this stop. Any advice would be appreciated at this point.

Thanks,

JLR

 

[rmet4nzkx]

Were you given a receipt for the gun?

 

[JLR80]

Were you given a receipt for the gun?

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I guess you could call it a receipt, it has the municipal PD information on the form as well as information about the item, etc.

The situation has been resolved in my favor, I might add. I personally went into the department and spoke with the highest ranking officer on duty this morning, which was a Lieutenant. He explained the circumstance, but stopped short of admitting the officer was wrong for confiscating the radar gun. There is no law in IL against possession of the gun, but this officer is apparently a newcomer to the profession and figured A) I might be involved in some sort of officer impersonation (having scanners and other two-way radios likely added to the hype) and B) private citizens should not be in possession of radar units in a moving vehicle.

At any rate, I did get the radar unit back and there should be no further problems I would suspect. The Lieutenant said in his 25 years on the force he has neither heard of nor seen private citizens possessing radar guns in their vehicle record other motorists speed, so this was apparently an "odd" circumstance for the officers.

This bears one final question for those in the know on this forum: Can police officers confiscate items in this manner during a routine traffic stop, assuming they do give you some sort of documentation/receipt? IMHO, this was a complete waste of time and I had done nothing wrong, the guy just screwed up. I'm not gonna push the issue, but I would like to know for whatever its worth.

If there are any police officers reading this thread, I would also like to pose another question to you out of pure curiosity: If you were the officer that had stopped me, would you have been suspicious about my possession of a radar gun and/or would you have looked into the possibility of confiscating the unit?

Thanks again rmet4nzkx for the reply!

 

[seniorjudge]

If there are any police officers reading this thread, I would also like to pose another question to you out of pure curiosity: If you were the officer that had stopped me, would you have been suspicious about my possession of a radar gun and/or would you have looked into the possibility of confiscating the unit?

I'm not a cop but I can tell you that a private citizen carrying a radar gun would raise a giant red flag for any law enforcement agent. At the very least, a visit to the local cop shop to explain how you got it.

 

[five10man]

Your radar jammer

[from AZ]
Depending on your cop's knowledge of how radar works, he might be aware that you could have been trying to use it as a jamming device. Also depending on the citation (if he had issued one,) and the judge's level of knowledge, he might be able to convince the judge, too. A slightly older radar gun without digital signal processing would be easily overwhelmed by a strong signal from the emitter on your truck, so (in theory at least) it could be a jamming device.

 

[JLR80]

The jammer issue presents and interesting twist I did not think about before. It is an older X-band doppler unit. However, the officer was not making an issue about jamming, he apparently had a problem with a private citizen possessing a radar gun.

SeniorJudge: I can understand fully why this would raise a red flag. However, I've done some searching today and can only reasonably conclude that a radar gun is a radio transceiver device which requires a federal license to operate (FCC issued). Most PDs obtain a license that covers use by all officers from what I can gather, but the standard license that authorizes the operation of two-way radios by the department will suffice. I do hold a valid FCC amateur radio license, which covers a subpart of the frequencies used by the X-band doppler radar. Therefore, unlike flashing red lights or sidearms, there are no exclusive rights granting police officers the right to possess radar guns and forbidding Joe citizen from doing the same. Even if Joe Citizen doesn't have a valid license, only the FCC can enforce communications regulations. Therefore, I don't see how they can confiscate the unit, much less run anyone in for interrogation.

Anyone can purchase radar guns over the Internet or from private dealers. A Google search will reveal plenty of suppliers at the click of a mouse. I've even seen them used at baseball diamonds. However, since this is likely to be a future issue with law enforcement, I am giving the unit back to my friend and declining his offer for purchasing the unit. I suppose it's worth the headaches saved from a similar experience in the future.

 

[seniorjudge]

SeniorJudge: I can understand fully why this would raise a red flag. However, I've done some searching today and can only reasonably conclude that a radar gun is a radio transmitter device which requires a federal license to operate (FCC issued). Most PDs obtain a license that covers use by all officers from what I can gather. I do hold a valid FCC amateur radio license, which covers a subpart of the frequencies used by the X-band doppler radar. Therefore, unlike flashing red lights or sidearms, there are no exclusive rights granting police officers the right to possess radar guns and forbidding Joe citizen from doing the same. Even if Joe Citizen doesn't have a valid license, only the FCC can enforce communications regulations. Therefore, I don't see how they can confiscate the unit, much less run anyone in for interrogation.

Maybe all that is true...but I answered the following question you asked:

If there are any police officers reading this thread, I would also like to pose another question to you out of pure curiosity: If you were the officer that had stopped me, would you have been suspicious about my possession of a radar gun and/or would you have looked into the possibility of confiscating the unit?

 

[wirry1422]

I have previously worked in the Chicago area as a "stringer", basically an independent video contractor for the local news stations gathering breaking overnight news video. I used to own a used ford crown vic police interceptor on which i had installed several antennas to operate a two-way radio and approximately 7 scanners which i used to listen for incidents around the area. I also have an FCC amateur license and had a CPD news license, but i have still been questioned by local and state officers on several occasions during routine traffic stops about the equipment. However, i can tell you that Illinois has some of the least restrictive laws regarding scanners, radar equipment and detectors of any state in the nation, mainly as a result of lobbying by amateur radio enthusiasts, scanner listener organizations, and news agencies. Many other states, including neighboring Indiana, go so far as to prohibit the carrying of scanners in motor vehicles, for any reason, by private citizens. Be careful, but also keep in mind that as a citizen of Illinois, you have far more liberties than most, and their is very little you could be cited for by illinois law enforcement regarding the operation of radio and radar equipment as a hobby.

 

[qcxlvr1]

Well, if I stopped someone with a radar unit in their vehicle, I'd ask what they were doing with it just for my own curiosity, however, I'm really not sure of the legality of confiscating the unit. They are not illegal for regular people to possess to my knowledge.

 

[tipdrill]

How exactly does a radar gun jam signals from law enforcement? What type of radar gun are we talking about?

 

[five10man]

How radar works/gets jammed

Traffic radar works by the "Doppler effect." The same phenomenon that causes the sound of a vehicle driving by you to increase in frequency as it approaches and decrease as it leaves you, even though its engine speed is the same the whole time, is the effect that radar guns rely upon. The gun sends out a microwave signal - a tone - which reflects off of your vehicle. The tone changes its frequency in direct proportion to your speed - the faster you are traveling relative to the source of the tone, the more the tone is altered. A receiver in the gun listens for the reflected tone, and compares the sent and received tones to calculate your speed.

The jamming part comes in here: The gun needs to hear the tone reflected back to it. If a stronger tone is present, such as a reflection from a tractor-trailer or another radar gun in the same band of frequencies, this will drown out the reflection from your vehicle and result in a false (or no) reading. Many guns are fitted with speakers so the operator can hear an audio representation of the reflections coming back to the gun; this allows a discerning operator to cut down on false readings as well as hear attempted jamming. Newer guns, with digital signal processing, will ignore spurious signals and only accept those they deem appropriate to the situation.

 

[JLR80]

How exactly does a radar gun jam signals from law enforcement? What type of radar gun are we talking about?

Thus unit is a K55 doppler radar transceiver manufactured by MPH Industries that operates on the X-band. I've just decided not to keep it in the vehicle after talking with a few folks, including a school resource police officer at the school where I work, under the pretense that it does create too much suspicion (especially with a police impersonator running about) and I don't need a repeat of what happened the other day (i.e. confiscation).

 

[fedcop110]

The gun sends out a microwave signal - a tone - which reflects off of your vehicle. The tone changes its frequency in direct proportion to your speed - the faster you are traveling relative to the source of the tone, the more the tone is altered. A receiver in the gun listens for the reflected tone, and compares the sent and received tones to calculate your speed.

Actually the radar unit sends out radio waves. The radar unit compares the transmitted signal and the reflected frequency and determines the speed of the relative motion. The change in frequency is called Doppler Shift

 

[seniorjudge]

The change in frequency is called Doppler Shift

I thought that was a heavy metal band.

Guess not.

Gotta get out more.

 

[fedcop110]

The gun sends out a microwave signal - a tone - which reflects off of your vehicle. The tone changes its frequency in direct proportion to your speed - the faster you are traveling relative to the source of the tone, the more the tone is altered. A receiver in the gun listens for the reflected tone, and compares the sent and received tones to calculate your speed.

Now we're into my bread and butter.

Actually the radar unit sends out radio waves. When there is relative motion between the radar unit and another vehicle, the wavelength of the radio frequency is either shortened or lengthened depending on the direction of relative motion. The radar unit compares the transmitted signal and the reflected frequency and determines the speed of the relative motion. The change in frequency is called Doppler Shift.

In the case of a K band radar device, the constant for 1 mile per hour is 72 cycles (wavelength) per second. Examples for the K Band:
72 cycles/second is 1mph
720 cycles/second is 10mph
2880 cycles/second is 40mph
7200 cycles/second is 100mph

The Doppler principle states that “When there is relative motion between two objects, one of which is transmitting wave energy, the frequency of the signal as received by the other object changes due to that relative motion”

The "tone" has nothing to do with the measurment that the radar unit makes to determine speed. The audio tone, however, is a factor in a tracking history.

All in all, I think that you (JLR80) did the correct thing in putting the radar away. It may/maynot be illegal in your state to have the unit in your vehicle, but in either case as seniorjudge stated, it would throw up MAJOR flags in my eyes. It would, if nothing else, get you detained longer than if I stopped you for speeding and you didn't have the radar. I would be greatly interested in investigation why you had a radar unit.