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« on: May 12, 2010, 12:29:21 PM »

Police: Woman made threats using ham radio

By CHARLES HAND/The Valley Chronicle
Published: Friday, May 7, 2010 1:52 PM CDT
A San Jacinto woman was caught only 30 hours after she began using her ham radio to broadcast threatening messages to Hemet police officers and Riverside County Fire Department firefighters over official radio frequencies and otherwise disrupting communications.

According to a statement from Hemet police Lt. Mark Richards, Irene Marie Levy, 29, was arrested just after midnight Monday after she had made at least one bomb threat and multiple references to death of Hemet police officers and firefighters.

The county fire department has stations in the valley and is the fire department for San Jacinto under a contract with the California Department of Forestry.

The broadcasts were not linked to the series of attacks against the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force, said Richards.

Levy began broadcasting from her mobile home in the 900 block of South Grand Avenue sometime Saturday night and continued intermittently until her arrest 30 hours later.

Richards said she broadcast threats and reference to police officer and firefighter deaths randomly on frequencies used by police and the fire department.

She also interrupted radio communication Sunday afternoon and night during a fire department search-and-rescue call, a vegetation fire, and traffic accident in Hemet Sunday afternoon and evening.

She made the bomb threat during the early morning hours of Sunday, Richards said.

Levy made herself sound like a man during her illegal transmissions, according to Richards.

Fire communications technicians formed a task force equipped with radio direction finders to search for the source of the broadcasts.

Technicians from the Riverside Police Department were asked to join the search because they have had experience with the search techniques, called triangulation in reference to its pinpointing the source of radio signals by detecting them from three points on the compass.

Since the transmissions were sporadic, they were difficult to locate.

After launching her threatening transmissions on fire frequencies, she expanded them to the Hemet police radio frequency Sunday morning, Richards said.

During one of the Hemet police radio frequency interruptions on Sunday evening, Levy allegedly boasted that the police would never find her.

Late Sunday, Levy’s location was pinpointed and law enforcement officers approached Levy’s mobile home as she made a transmission on the Hemet police frequency, Richards said.

They arrived at her front door just as she finished what would be her last transmission.

Hemet investigators seized 11 radios, seven radio frequency scanners, radio frequency lists, computer equipment, and other radio equipment from Levy’s home.

Police also seized Levy’s ham radio license, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in September.

Levy was booked into jail at the Hemet police station on charges of making terrorist threats; false bomb threat; and maliciously interrupting, disrupting, impeding, or interfering with the transmission of a public safety radio frequency.

Levy remained in jail at the Southwest Justice Center on $50,000 bail Wednesday.


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