Twitter was abuzz with this little factoid and sure enough it looks like police in D.C. are experiencing large scale communications outages:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – D.C. Police sources tell FOX 5 that radio communications are down citywide in the District, and police officers on the street have no way to receive or respond to calls via radio.

Sources tell FOX 5 that communication went down sometime around 7:15 p.m. on Monday night. That source also told FOX 5’s Will Thomas that officers in the field have no way to respond to calls from dispatch via radio.

Some officers were returning to headquarters, and some were being asked to communicate by cell phone while the outage is investigated and repaired. The D.C. Office of Unified Communication is working on the issue, but there’s no word what caused it.

Sources tell FOX 5 that it’s possible the issue is related to a generator problem at the McMillan Drive facility.

By 10 p.m. Monday, radios were still down, but sources said the in-car computers used by officers were beginning to come back up.

[…]

A police union spokesperson told FOX 5 this may not be the first time the radio system has gone down in the last month.

Fire Department communications was also disrupted but they were able to respond to 911 calls via a backup system.