By MARK GILLISPIE, October 24, 2018

CLEVELAND (AP) — Officials have seized radios cloned from a stolen police radio that could have disrupted emergency communications and endangered lives, a sheriff said Wednesday.

The Stark County Sheriff’s Office and Canton police are investigating eight to 10 people involved in the sale of the radios after seven searches carried out Monday in the Canton area, Sheriff George Maier said. The cloned radios are no longer operable, he said.

No one was arrested during the searches, which also uncovered potential weapons violations being investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Maier compared the cloning of the radio, which appears to have been stolen from Canton police, with a computer crime. Someone with “above-average intelligence” downloaded the stolen radio’s software to a computer and then uploaded it to commercially available radios, allowing users to monitor the communications of the sheriff’s office and police and fire departments that are part of a countywide system, Maier said.

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