HEADLINE
String theory
The real nightcrawlers
No strings attached
STANDFIRST
Across the vast expanse of Los Angeles, a handful of hard-core people spend all night racing to
crime scenes and car crashes to film them for local TV news. Known as ‘stringers’, their exploits
were recently seen in the movie Nightcrawler. The Raishbrook brothers are three such stringers
who acted as advisors on the film and they gave Scott Snowden a rare chance to ride along
MAIN BODY
Like a giant illuminated lattice, the lights of Los Angeles stretch out, extending in every direction
to the horizon. Tiny, bright clusters of colour seem to shimmer in a big, black ocean, made dark
by the night sky above. At night the city looks at peace. Traffic congestion commonplace during
the day has all but disappeared and there’s hardly a vehicle in sight.
On this hot June night however, a silver, super-charged Ford Taurus raced northwards along the
405 freeway, the needle on every dashboard dial was flung to the far right and its mighty sixcylinder engine roared.
“Fuck. Fuck. We’ve got to get ahead of it. I’m coming off here,” the driver snapped, cutting across
three lanes and barely making the exit.
The driver was Howard Raishbrook, a 38-year-old, British-born resident of Los Angeles with an
unusual occupation. He’s a stringer; a profession recently brought to the public’s attention in the
Oscar-nominated movie Nightcrawler, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo and Bill Paxton.
The lights at the bottom of the exit ramp were just changing from green to amber as Howard put
his foot down and made a hard right turn at the same time. The tires squealed and I slide across
the back seat, scrambling to put my seatbelt on.
A stringer is police slang for someone who listens in to emergency service radio frequencies and
then engages in a race to reach the scene before anyone else, so they can film it first and sell it
to the TV networks in time for the next news broadcast. We’d heard a call for a code-3, possible
503, units in pursuit. Half a dozen cop cars were chasing someone at over 100mph eastbound on
the 101 freeway. This is the sort of thing that makes it onto Police Camera Action and it wasn’t
even 10:30pm yet.
Knowing he would be stuck behind pursuing police units if he stayed on the freeway, Howard
hoped to take a short cut and get ahead of the chase, which would give him the footage he
wanted. Throughout our attempt to catch up, he was listening to every overlapping broadcast on
the scanner so he could keep track of exactly where the fleeing vehicle was.
“Possible BFMV,” the scanner crackled. “That’s a ‘burglary from motor vehicle’ suspect,” Howard
explains. “It’s getting too dangerous. The ground units are gonna back off.”
At the next intersection the lights were red and Howard’s frustration was fairly obvious. “Fuck.
Fuck. Trouble is we’re at the top of the last news hour, so there will be choppers all over this any
second. They’re hit and miss, these pursuits, but Christ I love ‘em,” he laughs. “It’s just a cat and
mouse game really…” at which point the light changed and we left a trail of rubber and a cloud of
smoke behind us.
“He’s coming off the freeway... Lindley and Burbank… Fuck me…he’s going right past where
Austin lives,” he hit a couple of buttons on his steering wheel and the sound of a phone ringing
blared out of the back speakers.
“Mate, are you tracking this? I know! Fucking right. Alright. Yup. Bye.”
Howard is one of three brothers, all of whom have chosen this quizzical career path. Together
they make up RMG News, short for Raishbrook Media Group. His younger brother Marc was also
out tonight covering the Downtown area, but his twin brother Austin was at home nursing a sick
wife and child. As it turned out, Austin had only to slip some shoes on, walk 20 metres to the
bottom of his road and hold his camera steady as the suspect vehicle raced past followed by
nearly 10 police cars with sirens screaming and lights flashing. It was already becoming apparent
that the reason the Raishbrook boys had been put on this earth was to do this kind of work.
Meanwhile, we were still in the chase, but not for long. The scanner bleated something out
something incomprehensible. “They’ve got him,” Howard said, surprised and disappointed at the
same time. “Marriott hotel, Ventura and Sepulveda. That’s two blocks from here…”
The tires squealed once more as he pulled a sharp u-turn in the road and I virtually face-plant the
rear passenger-side window. We pulled up to the hotel forecourt and I could already see a
perimeter being set up. A small crowd of people had gathered and more police units were arriving
all the time.
“We might be able to get the arrest…” he muttered already half way out of the car and scrambling
to get his camera. Sadly, the suspect was already in custody and I could see Howard talking to
one of the Los Angeles Police Department officers and then into his cellphone.
After a few minutes we walk back to the car. “Listen to this…” he says. “There were undercover
officers working a prostitution sting at this hotel…he dumped his car and ran straight into them,”
he laughed. “And Austin got some footage of the chase going past his street. Unbelievable.”
Howard was happy.
Straight away other stringers showed up and mobile response vans from every local news station
were on the scene seconds later. In the night sky above us, a news helicopter hovered. “You hear
that?” He smiled pointing up the chopper. “I love that. I fucking love the sound of news choppers
overhead.”
According to Howard, many of the TV stations were based not far from here and it was still early
enough in the night for the mobile crews to make the last news segment at around 11 o’clock.
“They would’ve been following it on the ground and in the air, but if that pursuit had been in say,
South Central, that wouldn’t have happened.” He tells me that there wasn’t really anything he
could get from this and it was better to continue waiting, so we gently cruise past the flashing
lights and media frenzy and crept off into the night.
Less than a minute later the scanner cackles into life: 1-Adam-16 requesting back-up with
supervisor code 37.
“Ooh, stolen vehicle. It could be a pursuit again. They ran the plate and it came back stolen.
Chatsworth and Hayvenhurst, that’s quite a way, but there’s a good chance it could turn into a
pursuit. Come on you fuckers, be a pursuit…”
Thankfully Howard continued to translate the tangled mess of transmissions coming from the five
scanners he has mounted in his car. Occasionally I make out the odd phrase, but it’s still
meaningless.
“Code 6-Charles. Burglary suspect at gunpoint in a stolen vehicle. Right, they’ve got their guns
out, so dispatch is telling all other units to respond from the other way. Hmmm, nothing here,” he
sighs.
We continue driving albeit at more leisurely pace and return to our ‘staging area’, which is an
empty parking lot close to a strategic intersection of the 405 and the 101 freeways. There’s also a
gas station here where we can refuel and visit the restroom.
Born and raised near Gillingham in North Dorset, the Raishbrook boys developed an interest in
the work of the emergency services from an early age.
“Anytime we would hear sirens in our town, which was probably twice a month, we’d get on our
bikes and pedal miles to try and follow it.”
After a few years, the pushbikes were replaced with police scanners and they would listen in to
the local law enforcement, although there wasn’t much murder or mayhem in North Dorset. “Most
of the time the calls were about things like a stray cow or injured badger,” he laughed.
Together with his twin brother, Howard became interested in photography and video production
and following some work experience at the BBC, they both decided to move out to Los Angeles,
aged 18. Sustaining themselves with studio-based production work, they bought a cheap $100
police scanner from RadioShack and listened in to the LAPD. Back in 1995 resources were
limited, the internet as we know it was only just beginning to take shape and there was no GPS to
speak of, so Howard and Austin were forced to rely on fold-out maps and an inch-thick annual of
technical terminology called Police Call Radio Guide.”
From early on, they learned that most incidents took place in South Los Angeles, a troubled area
south of Downtown, between the 10 and the 105 freeways. “Everything outside of that was either
too far away or we wouldn’t listen to.”
The sound of scanners squawking was constant in the background as we talked. Every now and
again Howard would translate. “Code 3-11 indecent exposure. Some guy masturbating in a truck
at Pico and Western.”
For five years they spent their nights sitting in a rented car in the worst areas of Los Angeles,
listening to a police scanner and driving to the scenes of crimes to film. “We had this huge archive
of footage and it dawned on us that we could make some extra cash on top of our day jobs. We
could sell this stuff that we loved making anyway.”
The work of a stringer is very much dictated by the news schedules of Los Angeles TV stations.
Every local station has 10 o’clock and 11 o’clock news that will broadcast any breaking stories.
However, the next such news broadcast after this is 4am, which leaves a window of about six
hours and the busiest time, when most incidents occur, is usually between midnight and 2am.
“News crews don’t work during this time because of union rules that dictate the number of hours
between shifts, plus they’d have to get hazard pay, double time and stuff like that. Helicopters
can’t go up ‘cause of noise complaints. They all go home at 11 o’clock or 11:30, so it’s fair game
then and that’s what it’s all about.”
Within this opportunistic window of anarchy, the night often unfolds in a predictable manner.
“Between 2am and 3am you get your DUI crashes as people leave bars. Between 3 and 4 you
get your domestics ‘cause the husbands and wives get home drunk. And then when it’s hot,
there’s more crime and when it’s cold there’s more fires.”
However, he explains that unless it’s a particularly big story, we’d need to get something out by
3am at the latest, since the station still needs to contact the emergency services to get details,
they have to write the story, edit the footage, set their news agenda and so on.
“Traffic stories sell, so if you have a traffic story that’s going to block the morning commute, they’ll
always cut to that. An over-turned rig, avoid this freeway – and they’ll run your footage. But as far
as a shooting or a fire or anything after 3am, they’ll probably send their own crew a little later in
the morning.”
Friday and Saturday nights are the busiest Howard says. And holidays. “July 4 th or New Year’s
Eve are goldmines, absolute goldmines. People burn themselves, set fire to things, get drunk,
shoot each other…yeah, love it.”
“Code 419, DB, that’s ‘dead body’, San Gabriel Valley, that’s over where Marc is.”
In the movie Nightcrawler, both Jake Gyllenhaal and Bill Paxton play stringers. It was praised
when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and it later performed well at the box
office. The Atlantic said it was Gyllenhaal’s "best performance to date” and it was nominated for
an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. When director Dan Gilroy approached the TV
stations and asked who was the best at this kind of work, he was told to contact the Raishbrook
boys and they ended up serving as technical advisors for the film. Austin even has a cameo.
“People know who were are. We have contacts at the fire and police departments, we’ve done
training videos for them, so we have a good reputation and because of that we were asked to
help out.”
Jake Gyllenhaal and Bill Paxton rode along with Howard and his brothers for several nights. “Bill
was really good fun. Jake was focused on researching his part, so he was quite serious. Bill grew
up around here and one night we got into a police chase, he was giving me all these brilliant short
cuts, so I told him if I ever need a navigator, I’d call him. He loved that. We were high-fiving in the
street, it was a bit surreal.”
“Someone’s just thrown a brick through a department store window at La Brea and Venice.”
Following the film’s success and frustratingly for Howard, the number of people attempting this
work has risen significantly. “Since the movie came out, we get job requests all the time, but
they’ve got to be switched on, they have to have their own equipment, they have to be able to film
and edit footage. It’s usually young guys, full of piss and vinegar, I think the expression is.”
The rates vary slightly between stations, but they are flat rates nonetheless. Howard gets paid the
same for a plane crash as he would for a hydrant crash. He might get a little more from the
networks, like CNN or ABC Network News, but the entertainment shows like World’s Weirdest
Videos pay the most.
“There are almost a dozen stations to sell to. There’s no exclusivity like in the movie and
everybody talks to everybody, so if you sell an exclusive for say $500 to just one station, you’d
probably still earn more doing a non-exclusive to every station, plus you’re going to piss
everybody off at the same time. I wish I earned the money he’s seen to demand in the movie, but
it’s not like that.”
This is not the Raishbrook brother’s first flirt with fame. Back in 2008 they were the subjects of a
reality TV show called Stringers LA that was shown late at night across America on truTV.
“It became quite popular, but we only did two seasons. There’s only so much you can do with that
formula. It was quite graphic though, we had a few producers quit ‘cause they couldn’t deal with
it.”
Before his tragic suicide, Tony Scott had expressed an interest in the Raishbrook’s story after
Scott Free, the production company co-owned by Tony’s brother Ridley, bought their life rights.
They even hired scriptwriter Brian Helgeland, who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for LA
Confidential – sadly though, no further activity has been seen on this front.
On the outside his silver Ford Taurus looks like an ordinary car, albeit with a few more aerials
sticking out of the back, but on the inside it looks like the cockpit of a stealth bomber. A lot of
careful planning has gone into his set-up. This is the same vehicle that the police department will
soon use as standard and many unmarked units use already. Even the police sometimes mistake
him for an unmarked unit, which is secretly part of the plan.
"I’ve been involved in a chase alongside the LAPD and California Highway Patrol and each one
thinks you're the other," he laughs.
Mounted above his head are control panels for three digital scanners, plus he has two handheld
scanners fitted to the dashboard and with these, he can monitor the police and fire departments
and CHP. The car has an internet hotspot hard-wired into the ignition, so whenever the engine is
running, he has high-speed Wi-Fi access, enabling him to upload video to a dedicated server
from his laptop, which is locked into a stand on the passenger side. The car also has emergency
flashing lights, two double flashes in the back window and one in the front window and two
strobes in the front grille.
“I’m more scared of filming a crash on the freeway at 3am than I am going to Gangland with a
video camera, I’m terrified of being hit by a vehicle, so I want to be seen. And those lights are
really bright.”
Finally, he has mounted HD dashcams, front and back, and his handheld camera. “It’s not the
best in low light, but it’s a run-and-gun thing. Doing our job cameras get dropped, broken, burnt,
stolen, that kind of stuff. So we don’t buy expensive network cameras [the one he uses costs
about $4,500] it’s not worth it.”
With this set up, Howard can shoot, edit, upload and have his stories seen around the world in
under 10 minutes. We continue driving as the scanners blurt out bits and pieces of information.
“Trailer park shooting. Hmmm, that’s hardly news.”
Operating a police scanner isn’t just a case of sitting there listening, Howard was constantly
adjusting one scanner and then another, gently turning a dial here, occasionally pushing a button
there, tweaking this, adjusting that, taking in everything that was going on.
“They’re set on ‘hyper scan’ so they’re scanning through every dispatch channel and every
tactical channel. When I hear a specific tone I’ll pause it on that because I know it’s going to be a
new dispatch,” he says.
“There’s a guy walking down 6th Street in Downtown waving a machete.”
It goes without saying that not everyone looks favorably on the Raishbrook’s work and they’ve
had their fair share of bad press; the Los Angeles Times called them the “paparazzi of pain”.
Distressed friends and relatives at the scene of a crash or a fire have also been known to hurl
abuse and even take the occasional swing.
However, according to Howard, they don’t spend much time deliberating the moral qualms that
come with the job. They keep a clear conscience by sticking to a simple code: help first if you
can, film second. Soon after discovering they would beat the paramedics to a scene, they all
underwent first aid training and carry emergency first aid kits in their vehicles.
“People have come up to us and say ‘how dare you film my cousin who’s been shot’ or ‘that’s my
grandmother’s house burning down, you heartless bastard’ and they’ll start pushing us away and
smacking our camera,” he says.
"People want to see it, so we shoot it. If we didn't shoot this stuff, it would still happen."
A few years ago, Howard filmed a story about a three-year old that had fallen out of a window
three floors up in Marina del Ray and despite his best efforts to remain in the background and
film, he was still on the receiving end of a barrage of abuse.
“Afterwards I approached them and explained that as a result of this being broadcast, experts
would appear on the news explaining how this sort of thing can be prevented. It might even save
a life. Later, one of the guys who had been rude actually apologized. And every time I film a DUI
crash I hope people see it, it might make a difference.”
“We do have a morbid interest yes, but that’s who we are, we’re news gatherers. We film animal
rescues and things like that. And to be honest, the stations wouldn’t buy blood and gore
anyway…well, except for the Hispanic stations,” he laughed.
We see some crazy stuff. It certainly makes you appreciate life. I haven’t got to the point where
I’ve had my fill yet, but it will be interesting when my kid is born.
We’ve seen headless bodies, people actually being shot and burning, crispy bodies. We did a
bunch of ride longs with the CHP and the first time we ever did it we got a crash on the 405 in
West LA, it was a 23-year old UCLA student that had stalled her car in the fast lane and she got
rear-ended by a DUI driver and her car caught fire and we couldn’t get her out. We were the first
ones there and she was killed. We did the photography for the coroner so we did close ups of
whether she was wearing a seatbelt, close ups of the lights, that kind of stuff and she had both of
her legs broken, so she wasn’t conscious. We’ve seen people that have run over on the freeway,
they jumped of bridges and committed suicide and there’s just nothing left of them. It just looks
like a bunch of animal parts. You have to think ‘it doesn’t look like a body’ and just separate
yourself from it. We’re not really surprised by anything any more.
It wouldn’t interest me. I think it’s about being out in the field and witnessing this and actually
being part of the action and the adrenalin rush of it. I wouldn’t want to work in a studio. I probably
earn more than them anyway, to be honest. I like how Jake Gyllenhaal put it in the movie, he’s
like a coyote, he’s out there, he’s hungry. And that’s how we feel, we feel like the city is ours. It
quietens down, a lot of people go to bed and the criminal underbelly just comes alive. And I love
it. I just love it.
I hadn’t seen any shootings or dead bodies mangled car wrecks, but every time now I see a news
story or tweet about an accident or shooting in Los Angeles I think of the Raishbrook boys
working hard to bring viewers the footage and photos.
Nightcrawler is currently on Netflix and available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray
NOTES#1
Technical section
We climb back into Howard’s car and quietly cruise off into the night. On the outside his silver Ford Taurus might look like
an ordinary car, albeit with maybe a few more aerials sticking out of the back, but on the inside it looks more like the
cockpit of a stealth bomber. A lot of careful planning has gone into his set up. The vehicle itself is not the police edition,
but it is the variation that unmarked units currently use and the LAPD will be adopting this for their ‘black and whites’ in the
not too distant future.
“You want to drive something that people will respect on the road and you’ll blend in,” Howard says. “The police do their
research pretty thoroughly and this is a safe, fast car. And being a car designed for the police, I knew there would be room
to fit scanners and equipment.”
Mounted above his head are the control panels for three Uniden digital scanners, each one is dedicated to one branch of
the emergency services; LAPD, LA City Fire Department and the LA County Fire Department. These are just the control
panels; they’re wired to the main units, which are bolted into wielded steel frames secured in the trunk. He also has two
Uniden digital hand-held scanners in clip-in holders that are dedicated to the municipalities and the California Highway
Patrol.
He has a mobile Verizon internet hotspot, hard-wired into his ignition, so whenever the engine if running, he has highspeed 5G wireless internet. Locked into a stand, which itself is bolted to the floor on the passenger side, is an Asus laptop
with the latest Celeron processor and a very fast editing suite called Edius. Spaced around the steering wheel is the first
mobile phone that is dedicated to running an application called PulsePoint and the second is his own.
PulsePoint is an application specifically written for people who have CPR knowledge, so if there’s a need for someone
who knows CPR, they can help out and according to Howard, it’s very useful. The car also has emergency flashing lights,
two double flashes in the back window and one in the front window and two strobes in the front grille.
“The reason for those is a lot of the time we’re on the scene of a freeway crash and there’s no lights and I want to be
seen. I’m actually more scared of filming a crash on the freeway at 3 o’clock in the morning than I am going to gangland
with a $4,000 camera, I’m more scared of being hit by a vehicle, so I want to be seen. And those lights are really bright.”
Finally, there’s two mounted HD dashcams, one in the front and one in the rear and Howard’s camera of choice is a JVC
GY-HM650 ProHD. “It’s not the best in low light, but it’s a run-and-gun, it’s lightweight. And it’s not too expensive, I mean
doing our job cameras get dropped, broken, burnt, stolen, that kind of stuff. So, generally we don’t buy $15,000 news
network cameras, it’s not worth it.”
With this impressive set up, Howard can shoot, edit, upload and have his stories seen around the world in 15 minutes. We
continue driving as the scanners blurt out bits and pieces of information.
Two-night set up
By now it was about 2:30am, we’d had our excitement for this evening and it had happened quite early on. Even the
scanners themselves had been unusually quiet for long periods. It was time to call it a night. Howard dropped me at my
car, which wasn’t too far away. “If we’d got that police chase say half an hour ago, that would’ve been it, I’d be wired, I’d
never be able to sleep tonight,” he laughed.
Despite the occasional yawn, I was still buzzing and I could hardly wait for tomorrow night.
The next day Howard wasn’t sure where his brothers would stage from, so he settled on meeting in the same empty car
lot near Ventura and Burbank. It was just after 9pm and I was returning to my parked car having just bought some Red
Bull when before I’d even managed to unlock it, Howard’s car suddenly screeches to a halt right beside me.
“Get in!” He shouts through the open window. “Here we go again,” I thought, first lobbing in the grocery bag then throwing
myself onto the back seat.
“The call actually came out a short while ago,” he shouts over his shoulder. “But there will still be a crime scene and it’s in
Simi Valley, so it’s worth going to.”
Located in the affluent southeast corner of Ventura County, adjacent to Thousand Oaks and Chatsworth, Simi Valley has
been voted one of the safest cities in the US for the last 10 years or more. It still has crime sure, but this was a code-187:
homicide. Local residents of sleepy city shocked to find one of their own brutally murdered – it had “tonight’s top story”
written all over it.
“It’s 15 minutes old, but there might be only one other stringer ‘cause it’s so far out, but it could make a good story,”
Howard told me as he sped down the empty car pool lane of the freeway. “I can’t normally do this,” he laughed.
NOTES#2
Feeling in need of a little boost, I offered to get some Red Bull from the gas station across the road so I could stretch a
little at the same time. Gazing around the shelves stuffed with every example of junk food conceived by man, I pick up
and pay for a four-pack. Before I’m half way across the forecourt, Howard’s Ford Taurus suddenly screeches to a halt in
front of me.
“Get in!” He shouts through the open window. “Here we go again,” I thought, throwing myself onto the back seat.
“The call came a few minutes ago…” he shouts over his shoulder. “It’s in Simi Valley, which is a bit of a drive, but there
will still be a crime scene, so it’s worth going to.”
Located in the comfortable southeast corner of Ventura County, adjacent to Thousand Oaks and Chatsworth, Simi Valley
has been voted one of the safest cities in the US for the last 10 years or so. It still has crime sure, but this was a code187: homicide. Residents of Sleepy City Shocked to Find One of Their Own Brutally Murdered – it had ‘tonight’s top story’
written all over it.
“It’s 15 minutes old, but there might only be one other stringer ‘cause it’s so far out, it could make a good story,” Howard
told me as he sped down the empty car pool lane of the freeway. “I can’t normally do this,” he laughed.
He hoped there would be a body bag or even a chalk outline, then if we got something else tonight he could package
them together and offer a two-for-one deal, something they do quite often, giving them another edge over their
competition.
“Confirmed shooting, DOA,” he enthusiastically repeats from the scanner.
We continue speeding up the freeway for another few minutes, then Howard takes the next exit and quickly checks the
precise location on his laptop, while we’re waiting at the lights.
“It’s at the end of a cul-de-sac, so hopefully they haven’t blocked the street off, they might frown upon us tarnishing their
reputation as a super-safe city, so they might even block it off and wave us on.”
Sure enough, the LAPD had taped off a large area, preventing any cameras from getting closer than about 30 meters to
the crime scene. Another stringer was interviewing the neighbors to get their shocked reaction to this suburban horror
story.
Howard explains that since there was no sign of even a covered body, it wasn’t worth hanging about.
“You always need to get the victim, there’s no point shooting something without a victim.”
We climb back into Howard’s car and quietly cruise off into the night.