Anonymous Posts St. Louis Police Dispatch Tapes From Day of Ferguson Shooting

“We are switching over to the riot channel at this time.”


This was just posted by @theanonmessage, a twitter account affiliated with Anonymous’ Operation Ferguson, a member of which I interviewed last night. According to @theanonmessage, this recording contains audio excerpts from St. Louis County police dispatch over several hours on August 9, 2014, the day Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer. The dispatcher starts talking about the Brown shooting around the 10-minute mark, while intermittently handling other calls. See below the recording for an updating list of interesting moments, with time stamps included.

If you want to try to decipher the dispatch codes, here’s a dictionary for that.

9:35: “Ferguson is asking for assistance with crowd control . . .”

10:58: “Now they have a large group gathering there, she doesn’t know any further. . .”

11:20: “We just got another call stating it was an officer-involved shooting . . .”

11:30: “Be advised, this information came from the news . . .”

11:55: “We’re just getting information from the news and we just called Ferguson back again and they don’t know anything about it . . .”

20:00: “. . .destruction of property . . .”

21:55: “They are requesting more cars. Do you want me to send more of your cars?”

43:55: “Attention all cars, be advised that in reference to the call 2947 Canfield Drive, we are switching over to the riot channel at this time . . .”

Update, 4:40 p.m. ET: I tried to verify the dispatch recordings with St. Louis County Police but their media contact, Brian Shelman, did not answer the phone and his voicemail was full.

Update 2, 5:05 p.m. ET: Mashable is confirming that the St. Louis County Police Department is “aware of this and currently investigating.”

Update 3, 6:05 p.m. ET: A twitter follower of mine points out that the dispatch recording probably comes from Broadcastify, a database of public safety radio audio streams that’s available to anyone who pays for a subscription. It’s “far from a hack,” he says.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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