Over Roger

Over the past few months I have taken time out of my practicing for a roadside sobriety test, to watch more television.

Part of our household’s watching habits include police shows.  There are programs that show cops attempting to stop speeders of negligent drivers cruising about without license plate lights, shows that stop people from driving inebriated, and those programs compiled with dash-cam videos in all sorts of post-stop shenanigans.

No matter what form we watch, though, the cops enjoy using cryptic vocal communications such as 10-7, 10-62, and 10-79.

Not being a cop, I have little clue as to what most of those codes mean, and my sainted wife is even more at sea.

Highway Patrol with Chief Dan Matthews

Although I grew up watching Highway Patrol in black and white in the early days of television, I learned something from Chief Dan Matthews, played by Broderick Crawford.

In those police cars, were radios looking as though they came straight out of the Egyptian pyramids.  They were a version of a black Bakelite telephone receiver which required the speaker to gaze off into the sky while talking.

Sentences were in the variety of, “10-17 10-20 Spongecake Highway; 10-59 10-12.”

I learned 10-4 means “Okay”; 10-3 is “Stop transmitting”; 10-7 is “Out of service”; 10-20 represents “Location”; and 10-95 is “Subject in custody.”

Sure, all this seems puzzling to the police novice, but years of practice allowed me to learn these codes, much in the same vein as one would learn French.

My sainted wife, however, is too impatient to use a learning curve to make watching these police programs more informational and enjoyable.

Our conversation throughout is usually, “What did he say?” or, “Is he going for doughnuts?”

Even more confusing is the next level, the Eleven Code.  Ten Codes are special; Eleven Codes are even more special.  I’m not even going to breach the “Code Signals.”  No kidding.

In full disclosure, these codes have been in use since the police radio systems began use in the 1920’s.  This was an effort to abbreviate yakking on the radio, and make messages more concise, while hopefully eliminating confusion.

While this tack may be helpful to police, fire, and EMS personnel, it is generally baffling to civilians seeking emergency news via radio scanners, and watching television shows incorporating them in their storylines.

But here’s the rub.  These codes, although used by police departments nation-wide, are not standardized.

Very often the codes used by local police agencies are different from those used by the state police, EMS, and even the local sheriff.

So, in theory, all this code business is better than dry socks on a wet day.  Still, it is not standardized which could possibly lead to terrible miscommunication in critical and dire situations.

10-7.