Federal prison time for false Maydays

I googled this guy. Apparently he sent out four false Maydays -- one each in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011. Guess the Coast Guard decided it was time to break him of a bad habit.

Someone posted in the readers' comments below one news story that he knew the guy. According to him, Berry is a total loser supported by his wife; he's physically, verbally and emotionally abusive towards her instead of grateful; and he doesn't even own a boat. But apparently he does own (or did own) a radio.....

 

Hope this is enough to stop him from doing it. It wouldn't be funny if or should I say when someone died while the Coast Guard was diverted on his goose chase.
http://www.10news.com/news/30308899/detail.html

 

We had a great story here about six years ago.

A guy sees his impaired neighbour sitting in his trailered skiff in the drive way calling a May Day between sips of beer one Sunday aftenoon. He calls the police, they respond as he's making his third call. The cop witnesses the act and arrests him. Coast Guard new it was fruadulant as the radio tower the call was received on was 65 miles from his claimed position.

I spoke with the cop the next day, he was pretty pleased with the outcome, as was I.

I lost track of the case but I'm pretty sure goof-ball got what was coming to him not to mention the bad karma debits he collected...

 

Also, isn't the use of marine VHF illegal if you're not on the water

 

in this country ( USA ) the crime rate is dropping like a rock, yet the prisons remain jam packed. Kinda makes you wonder.

in my state, Colorado, there is a bid by private industry to purchase the prison system from the state, with one slight hitch, that the state agree to maintain a prisoner level of 95% or better, regardless. Again kinda makes you wonder.

While falsifying a distress call to the CG definitely places lives at risk and should be prosecutable I'd have to question the knee jerk lock em up and throw away the key mentality.

 

In this particular case, a sentence of a year and a day isn't what I'd call 'locking him up and throwing away the key....'

Four offenses in five years means it was time for the authorities to get his attention.

 

old arab justice !!

do something that he wont forget chop off a finger for each offence !! like the arabs so . and if its **** dont know what they remove for that one of 3 !.

 

ST I recall that on the news.

Some d-bags did a false pan-pan on me a few years back (engine not running etc-bad tides about to start) so I firewalled it and burned $200 worth of fuel in a short period of time and wasted 3 hours of my holidays looking around but they vanished off the air.

Well the truth is the woman usually gets punished in most places.

 

Arabs ---Saudi do not chop off parts for punishment, it is a deterrent.

 

I didn't read the individual case, I was just commenting on the injustice system as a whole. We even had our head bouncer get fired because the insurance company said he was on to many of the police reports. Duh, he's the lead man in, of course he's going to end up on the police report.

the system is seriously flawed when crime is going down and prison populations remain high.

I'll go read up on this particular situation and my bad for interjecting, but seriously I talk to cops just about every time I'm on and its amazing what gets people arrested and what doesn't. No rhyme or reason to it at all.

The link doesn't come up Troy, oh well I got the jist of it

 

I dunno but about 10 days ago there was a mayday call from a 30-boat supposedly 4-5 miles off of Hudson,Fla which is abit over an hour north of Tampa...the call was relayed from this ditressed boat to a fish company factory onshore . the mayday call from the capatin said that his boat was taking on water and that he and his family of five (apparently 3 kidsand the wife) were getting their lifejackets on in anticipation of the boat's sinking....that was all of the transmission before it cut out...The fish factory relayed the info to the Coastguard who spent the better part of the next two days looking for the vessel in question..It made breaking news stories locally...nothing ever came of it..the search was called off after the almost two days of searching...Go figure...Not a another peep about the whole affair since...quite strange dont'cha think?

 

In Europe a mayday is automatically tagged to your coordinates.

When you call mayday your VHF sends and accurate position making for a few obvious benefits including tracking false calls.

I dont think you can buy VHF without this function.

 

Doesn't appear to be true for VHF handhelds for sale in the UK: http://www.force4.co.uk/c/77/Handheld-VHF-Radios.html

Same vendor; all the fixed mount VHF radios they have include DCS. DCS broadcasts the position if a functioning GPS unit is properly connected. My understanding is currently there are only a few VHF radios with a built in GPS. http://www.force4.co.uk/468/Cobra-F55-Waterproof-DSC-VHF-Fixed-Radio.html

DCS is also required on fixed mount marine VHF radios sold in the US. http://www.boatus.com/husick/c_dsc.asp But use of older VHF radios without DCS is still permitted.

 

I think the way it works is they triangulate on your position through the tower or satellite system, I could be way off but I'm not sure its a feature of the individual units.

 

I have to admit to not looking but yes hand helds do not have this function possible because hand helds are for close range Marina work.

You could say that If you call mayday on a handheld your not far enough out to sea to need a mayday but its still acceptable if you dont need coordinates but explain you fell off the marina wall.

Just looking at my Standard US handheld, it is only 1 watt with a 5 watt H/L switch.