Have you ever listened to your local police scanner?

[Renew Deal]

There's a Police Scanner app on the iPhone called Scanner 911. http://scanner911.appspot.com

I've been listening to the scanner for my local area and it's fascinating. I never realized how much stuff was going on around me. I've heard about lots of burglaries, drunk fights, car accidents, medical issues, etc.. It's kind of scary.

The scanner has lots of localities listed including some outside the US. I highly recommend it unless you really don't want to know what's happening. And I don't blame anyone for that.

http://scanner911.appspot.com

[Berserker]

1. Here is a site

for listening on your computer. Just click on your state then click on your county.
http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/

[cutlassmama]

13. thank you for that link. it's awesome

[trud]

15. well boo-hoo

My county isn't on radioreference. That would have been interesting to check out.

[KT2000]

2. Not sure about that

My brother had such an app and he spent a lot of time trying to follow up on things he heard on the scanner - he wanted to know how things turned out.

But then again - when Mt. St Helens blew, we heard three loud explosions, like bombs had gone off. We did not know what it was and being out in the boonies we had few options to find out. The old time scanner was great for that - deputies were calling in with reports of broken windows and everyone was trying to figure out what was going on. I live a few hundred miles away.

The dispatcher eventually informed all emergency workers it was the volcano blowing. Eventually they determined that the "bombs" we heard was the sound waves from the volcano bouncing off the Olympic Mountain range.

[Renew Deal]

3. There was no warning for Mt. St. Helens?

How was that footage recorded? Was the volcano always being recorded those years? I know no there's nothing that escapes the lens.

[KT2000]

7. There had been warnings

for weeks before it blew but as time went on - people stopped believing it - that is why there were campers there. They (state patrol) were actively clearing out the area though the day before it blew. They even had crews working on logging operations. Also, some people still elected to stay and some wanted to be there when it blew. They had monitors at the volcano and probably cameras set up elsewhere. There was a photographer who was hoping to catch the eruption on film - which he did. He made a documentary about his experiences - horrible as he was caught in the hot ash and molten lava. He was eventually rescued.

I am on the far NW corner of Washington, across from Victoria BC, so we were not expecting to have effects. So when we heard what we thought were bombs, we were thinking along the lines of an attack.
Victoria heard the explosions too and it was a BC professor who figured out what caused it.

[Brickbat]

4. I used to work in a newsroom, so yes. It's pretty tiresome, not scary at all.

It's just humanity.

[Demoiselle]

5. I'll bet we could learn a new appreciation for what a difficult

and complicated job policing can be.

[Renew Deal]

6. I think so

I certainly didn't realize how busy my previous police precinct was. They cover a very populated, which apparently has a lot of issues.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Listening to police scanners is a pastime down here.

Lots of folks have one, in the house, often in the Pickups and cars, partly because we are dependent on so many volunteer fire and rescue workers.
( I don't have one anymore, tho,I am retired).

Funny story about scanners. One day not too long ago I was outside at the mailbox on the street,
and a car pulls up, with 2 very sweet, and VERY elderly silver haired ladies, I am guessing they are in their late 70's/early 80's.
They ask me " where is the house where the man fell off a ladder?".
I replied with the Southern equivalent of "huh"? and they explained they had been a couple of miles down the road and heard on the scanner that a man fell off a ladder, somewhere around my neighborhood, they just wanted to go watch the rescue team arrive!

Ok, admittedly things are very slow here in town...........

[senseandsensibility]

10. What's the southern equivalent of huh?

I'm imagining something like "come again, ma'am?"

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. It depends.

Depends on who you are talking to.
Can range from a distant but polite " I beg your pardon"? ( slightly frosty tone)
to
"Say whut"? ( best used for country folk under 40)

Usually " "I'm sorry????" in a light inquisitive tone.
Which almost always generates the exact same question in the exact same difficult to understand accent.

[jtuck004]

9. Wasn't scary b4 you got bombarded with the stuff. So

we put scary stuff on the news every night, instead of the fact that 99.9% of the people go through their day and the scariest thing they do is turn on the tv to watch the news, and then wonder why people seem so scared. (Or drive, but no one thinks about the now 34 - 36K that die doing that each year).

Interesting what that does to our thinking.

You are correct, lot's of stuff going on around us that we never hear about.

My neighbor used to have one of those. One day he heard a car chase nearby, so when they came down our street, he was ready, and threw a concrete block at the car. Next thing he heard on the scanner was "Watch out, there's some citizen throwing blocks at the car we are chasing". :rofl:

[saras]

11. not in a long time

back when I was a kid, there weren't enough channels to really need scanners, just ordinary shortwave radios. But one place they were used was at keg parties, so that the underage kids, and others, could split before the police arrived.

[cali]

14. nope. don't have a cell phone let alone an iPhone

don't even have cell reception where I live and watching paint dry would likely be more interesting than listening to the local police around here (no offense guys, but you really don't have that much to do)