I would have pushed to have the cop charged with impersonating an
amateur radio operator and for transmitting on the ham bands without a
license

Eric F. Richards wrote:


Hah. You don't remember the case of the kid who was an ARES worker a
few years ago... had an RS HTX-202, which had no out-of-band
capabilities at all, cop stopped him, kerchunked his radio and --
surprise! -- it desensed his police radio. Confiscation and charges
ensued.

It took a lot of work and time (years) to get it untangled, and it was
a headline issue with ARRL for quite a while.

The only good news to come out of it was that particular police
department got publicised as the ****heads they were. I wonder if
there's an active ARES chapter left there...

...search engines are wonderful. Here's a more accurate summary of
the endgame:

Charges dismissed in Godsey case: It took more than two years, but
all charges against a Kentucky ham for impersonating a public servant
and disorderly conduct finally were dropped in December. Greg Godsey,
KF4BDY, of Hopkinsville, was just shy of his seventeenth birthday when
he was arrested by police in his hometown. At the time, Godsey was
active in ARES as Christian County EC. He claims the impersonation
charge stemmed from his ARES association. Police also had charged
Godsey with carrying a scanner capable of receiving police frequencies
and confiscated his Radio Shack HTX-202. The scanner charge reportedly
was dismissed in court the following month, and his H-T was returned
to him. The other charges had remained on the court docket, however.
Godsey, now 19, said the charges were dropped in December after he
agreed to not sue anybody over the matter. Godsey says he and his
family spent more than $3000 fighting the charges against him.


Source: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/1999/02/23/3/

I would have ****in' sued to bankrupt the city. Not that I'm bitter
about power-mad authority types, oh, no.