• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Cops Pull Plug on Unlicensed Florida Radio Station

Posted on: Monday, 11 July 2005, 18:01 CDT

Jul. 10--There are no more island tunes blaring from an illegal radio station after North Miami Beach police arrested a Hollywood man and shut off the signal broadcast over a frequency hijacked from Key Largo's WMKL-FM (97.1).

Rob Robbins, a manager of the rock and hip-hop station WMKL, was getting calls from listeners who were wondering where the rock had gone. Listeners in the North Dade area were instead hearing Caribbean melodies when they tuned in at night.

Robbins spent six years getting his station off the ground. He wasn't going to let anyone steal the 5-year-old station's signal.

"Our signal was completely gone," Robbins said. "We were losing listeners."

Robbins got in his van with an antenna and started to search for the illegal signal. The trail took him to 2040 NE 163rd St. A large antenna hung from the roof secured with a small rope.

"You just can't hide those things," Robbins said.

Robbins called North Miami Beach police and told them what he had found. Detectives Michael Stein and Joseph Gamerl responded.

"You have a public station that is doing public good, broadcasting and complying with FCC. They were doing what public radio stations need to do," Stein said.

Stein says after they entered the building and talked to the owner they were directed to a suite that was rented a month ago by Lime Group Inc. Detectives then obtained a search warrant.

Mixers and transmitters and computers greeted the detectives when they entered the suite. However, they found no one at the station. A computer selected the tunes while an automatic timer would turn the signal on at about 5 p.m. and off at about 6 a.m.

"Nobody was there. We needed to lure someone there," Stein said. "So we turned off the radio signal."

A little later, according to police, Nigel Kern Mcleod, 30, from Hollywood, walked to the door of the pirate station suite with keys in hand. Police immediately arrested him on charges of interference with a public or commercial radio station, a third-degree felony.

Mcleod told police that he was sent there to turn on the signal, but he was not the person running the station. Police are still investigating trying to find Mcleod's accomplices, especially the man who rented the suite.

Police have confiscated all the equipment.

Stein says that though pirate stations are not everyday occurances, they do exist. He says North Miami Beach police are doing everything in their power to take them off the air.

"All kinds of other things use radio signals -- military, airplanes," Stein said. "Pirate signals could be jamming different signals that could put people in danger."

-----

To see more of The Miami Herald -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.herald.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Miami Herald

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Miami Herald

More News in this Category