Schaumburg police responded about 8:40 AM Tuesday to a report of a home invasion in the block of 300 Pembroke Lane Schaumburg, IL. Police received a report that two men forced entry into the front door of a townhouse. While the resident of the townhouse was home, the offenders stole items inside the home and fled.
Schaumburg police, Streamwood police, along with a K-9 unit from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and a Chicago Police helicopter conducted a search of the area around the home. Police did not locate the suspects.
Several people contacted The Cardinal Tuesday morning to inquire why a helicopter was hovering over Streamwood, and the area near Barrington Road and Weathersfield Way.
There were no real time alerts regarding the home invasion or the helicopter on any of Schaumburg’s social media sources on Tuesday morning:
Facebook Village of Schaumburg (official) …
Map of area of home invasion in Schaumburg near Streamwood …
IMPORTANT ALERT …
Cardinal Note: As of June 5, 2013 — up to and including the date of this article — police incidents related to the above police agency are not reported in real time or within a prompt time period. Police protecting their realm of investigation and police activity, have chosen to use secret military-grade encrypted radios to withhold their police communications, which were previously open to the public and news media via monitoring of public safety scanning radios — with no known negative results locally.
The delayed knowledge or entirely blacked out knowledge resulting from encrypted police communications may protect certain police operations and investigations, but it also puts the public at risk in situations such as when armed and dangerous offenders are at large and when other similar situations occur, such as when desperate offenders of property crimes are eluding police. In other cases, the delayed or blacked out information inhibits or prohibits the possibility of the public providing early witness accounts before a criminal trail goes cold. Citizens are much more likely to recognize or recall suspicious or criminal activity if they are aware of the criminal incident within minutes or hours of its occurrence. The most serious incident involving dire results would be a trail that is allowed to go cold in the case of child abduction.
The lack of real time information from public police dispatch also weakens an effective neighborhood watch program mostly working to prevent property loss, but also working to prevent possible violent crimes.
Police have alternate ways to transmit tactical, operational or investigative information, while still keeping their main public dispatch channels open for the best balance of public safety and police safety.
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