Citizens on Patrol

In Charlotte, N.C., Willis B. Howard, 32, a driver for the Yellow Cab Co., had just dropped off two men at a movie one night last June when the two-way radio in his cab blared out the police description of two escaped prisoners from nearby Union County penitentiary. The description tallied perfectly with his last fares. Howard grabbed his radio mike, called his dispatcher's office, which in turn alerted police. Within minutes, patrol cars rolled up and nabbed the escapees. Last week Howard won a $200 award for his good deed. Said Charlotte Police Chief John E. Ingersoll: "We wish we had 10,000 public-spirited citizens like Mr. Howard."

Actually, there are 300,000 or more citizens with that kind of public spirit in the U.S., and police, fire and other authorities are quickly catching on to the kind of help they can give. During the recent riots in Detroit, for example, the police received some 500 calls from two-way radio operators alerting them to trouble spots. Elsewhere, from Providence, R.I., to San Francisco, at all hours of the day or night, such callers are saving lives, spotting fires, getting aid to accident victims, and even bailing out motorists stalled on expressways.

Calling All Tractors. What has lifted the two-way radio from its "ham" stage to its role as key instrument in a mushrooming minuteman-like communications network has been its adoption by U.S. industry. Thousands of companies and other private organizations now use two-way radios to call their men in the field, be they taxi drivers, repairmen, or even tractor drivers on large farms. Then, the manufacturers of communications and electronics equipment have not been slow to realize the plan's clear-cut potential for community service, as well as boosting sales.

Hallicrafters Co. of Chicago has its REACT (Radio Emergency Associated Citizens Team), under which some 50,000 citizen operators have been organized into 1,600 teams, each of which is required to maintain sufficient membership to guard citizens-band Channel 9 (a nationwide emergency channel) 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In Detroit, the Automobile Manufacturers Association operates the headquarters of HELP, whose several thousand members man a network of two-way radios designed primarily to help stranded motor vehicle drivers.

Leading & Expanding. Picking up the idea, the Chicago-based firm of Motorola, Inc. last December introduced its Community Radio Watch and watched it take the lead; C.R.W. now claims a roster of a quarter of a million employee "agents" who work for some 20,000 business organizations in more than 300 cities. At first, C.R.W. operators funneled their reports through their company dispatchers. But increasingly police are calling C.R.W. first, and new programs are getting under way in St. Louis, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Lincoln, Neb. Says Cincinnati Public Safety Director Henry J. Sandman: "The police department could not duplicate this program with $100,000 worth of additional radio equipment, to say nothing of the additional personnel and vehicles that would be needed to carry it out."

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