North-central Iowans who enjoy eavesdropping on police scanner traffic got a surprise Monday. If you were in the Mason City area before 6 o’clock on Monday morning and listening to your police scanner, you probably heard two calls — one saying that Mason City Mayor Roger Bang had been assaulted, with another call nearly at the same time saying a Kum & Go convenience store on the city’s north side had been robbed.
Neither of those things happened according to Police Chief David Ellingson, who says it was all part of a drill for new police officers. Ellingson says what the officers didn’t realize is that their radio transmissions were on a frequency that could be monitored by the public. Ellingson says they should have included in the transmissions that it was all part of a training exercise.