We have guys here who are on summary (unsupervised) probation as well as formal probation. It's never been an issue for the probation office to just tell us that. In fact, we learned to call and confirm that a while back after one guy told us he was on summary probation, stayed here for a couple of months and then left, and then we got a call from his actual probation officer (he lied--he *was* on formal probation) looking for him because he hadn't reported in so long they were about to issue a warrant for his arrest. That's exactly the problem we're trying to avoid--having officers show up here to take someone into custody because we weren't aware he was wanted.
Anyway, now we call the probation office to confirm when a guy says he's on summary probation. Usually the officer of the day just looks him up in the system and says "yeah" and it's not a problem. The refusal to tell us anything at all without permission from the probationer is what's weird.