"Nightcrawler" stringers out in the cold as Toronto cops switch to encrypted communication

Weege

Excerpt from a story by the Star's Daniel Otis about the modern-day Weeges:*
"(Victor) Biro is a freelance photojournalist, and one of the last of his kind. After the city’s staff photographers have gone to bed, you’ll find Biro in his truck, listening to police, fire and EMS communications on radio scanners so he can chase the news as it happens.
"People call them stringers, nightcrawlers (as in Jake Gyllenhasal's movie of the same name) , ambulance chasers and vultures. They used to be common; now, there are only a handful of people doing this in the GTA. But when the Toronto Police Service switches from its old analogue radio system to fully encrypted digital communications this spring, people like Biro may very well become a thing of the past."
The whole Star story
*Weege, whose real name was Arthur Fellig, cruised the streets of New York in the 1930s and 1940s with his Speed Graphic taking some memorable crime scene photos of the era. He was arguably the first "nightcrawler."
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