Police missing over 2,200 walkie-talkies
Over the past five years, 2,244 police walkie-talkies have gone missing, RTL Nieuws reports after speaking with the police. According to the police, most of the missing devices are probably in a drawer or cupboard somewhere in the police stations. But they can’t say for sure that walkie-talkies have not fallen into criminal hands.
The police have disabled most of the missing walkie-talkies, but not all of them. The Rotterdam police, for example, have 450 active walkie-talkies that they don’t know where they are. Due to messy administration, it is not always clear who is using which walkie-talkie, and there is no system to quickly detect suspicious use, the broadcaster wrote.
The police have a total of 57,000 walkie-talkies, personally issued to each cop and secured with a PIN code. About 4 percent of them are missing. The police officer either reported them missing or they weren’t registered for an annual update. So, if the cop fails to report his walkie-talkie missing, it can take up to a year to realize it is unaccounted for. And all that time, malicious types could be listening in on police communication.
Jan Struijs, chairman of the police union NPB, wants an investigation into the missing devices. “We must be able to rule out 100% that devices are being used in criminal circles. The registration is currently a mess, and that is extremely undesirable,” Struijs told RTL.
