Police Scanner

The common police scanner is an essential intelligence-gathering tool for journalists, activists, neighborhood watch groups, spies, and more. With it, you can listen in on many of the conversations that law enforcement officers have on their radios, from officers out on patrol, to the dispatch teams manning the radios at the precinct.

The term “police scanner” is actually somewhat of a misnomer, as all of the devices described on this page can listen to more than just police frequencies, including fire/EMS, aircraft bands, marine radio, civilian walkie-talkie channels, and much much more.

Scanners are (usually) only capable of receiving audio. If you want to transmit, you will need a two-way walkie talkie or amateur radio

Thanks to modern technology, in many places you can remotely listen to what this man is saying.

Before you decide to go out and acquire your own scanner, it is absolutely imperative that you understand the different types of scanners, as not all of them can access the same frequencies. You will have to research ahead of time what frequencies & modes your local emergency services use, in order to find a compatible radio.

Police scanners will generally fall into one of four categories:

If you are looking for maximum compatibility out-of-the-box with minimal configuration, you will need to pony up the cash for a trunk-tracking digital scanner. While they are a substantial investment up-front (especially if you have to purchase, yes purchase, a firmware update for your model), nothing beats having one of these mounted in your vehicle or tactical bag, pre-programmed and ready to go.

Some popular digital scanners with trunk-tracking capabilities include:

• Uniden BCD325P2
• Uniden BCD436HP
• Uniden BCD536HP
• Uniden BCD996P2
• Uniden SDS100
• Uniden SDS200
• Whistler TRS-1
• Whistler TRX-2
• Whistler WS1098

Some of you may now be wondering: “But Anon, I have no money to buy any of this fancy hardware that you talk about! Is there any way I can still eavesdrop on law enforcement and emergency services?”

Lucky for you, there sure is! There is a plethora of websites and apps out there, where scanner owners across the world have hooked their radios up to the internet, so that others may tune in. This means you can listen to conversations in Washington all the way from Timbuktu.

Some of these apps include:

• Broadcastify
• OpenMHZ
• Scanner Radio
• 5-0 Radio

The trade-off with these apps is that, since the scanners streaming to these websites are tuned to specific frequencies by their owners, you cannot just tune to a random part of the dial. Whatever stations are on the list at the time, are the ones that you get.

Furthermore, if you're reliant on a cell phone signal for mobile data, police can track your movements with a stingray, or cut the towers entirely. Neither of these are things you want to deal with on the field, so you will definitely want to upgrade to one of the physical radio options above if you plan on doing radio recon on a regular basis.

Police are well aware that people are listening to them with these devices all the time, and they are known to take advantage of this for counter-intelligence during major protests and stings. It is not uncommon for police to throw out decoy plans over the radio, in order to disrupt protests and break up crowds.

This was especially evident during the 2020 protests in Seattle, where cops would frequently drop false-movements of SWAT teams over the radio. This would spook radio recon teams, who would pass the bogus “intel” to their fellow protesters on the front lines. In turn, the protesters would take the bait and move to their fallback positions, where the police were secretly waiting to have them kettled.

Watch out that you are not fooled by these types of charades!

Some police departments really do not like the general public listening to their conversations, and so they encrypt their transmissions. In some cities they will only encrypt some channels, and leave others open. In other cities, they encrypt everything. In either case, when it comes to encrypted frequencies, you will only hear a bunch of noise if you try to tune in. Short of having a person inside the police department to steal the encryption keys or one of their radios, there is no way around this, and it may be illegal in your locality to even try and bypass this encryption.

For an list of agencies known to use encrypted communications, check out this list at the RadioReference Wiki.