Police ScannerScanner guides
- Is It Legal to Listen to a Police Scanner?
Listening to unencrypted police radio is legal across the United States, but a handful of states restrict scanners in vehicles and every state punishes using one to aid a crime.
- Police Radio Codes Explained — Ten-Codes, Signals, and Plain Speech
What 10-4, 10-20, Code 3, and Signal 7 actually mean, why the same code means different things in different cities, and why many agencies dropped codes entirely.
- Why Are Police Channels Encrypted? What Changed and What You Can Still Hear
Why departments across the US have encrypted their radio traffic, which agencies still broadcast in the clear, and what remains available to scanner listeners.
- What Is a Trunked Radio System? P25, Talkgroups, and Digital Scanning
How trunked radio differs from conventional channels, what P25 Phase I and Phase II mean, and why talkgroups replaced frequencies as the thing you tune to.
- How to Listen to a Police Scanner on iPhone
You do not need scanner hardware to hear live police, fire, and EMS radio on an iPhone. Here is how online feeds work, how to find yours, and how to listen in the background or over AirPlay.
- Why Is My Scanner Feed Offline, Silent, or Delayed?
Feeds go quiet for a handful of predictable reasons — a volunteer's receiver, agency encryption, genuinely quiet radio traffic, or buffering. How to tell which one you have hit.
- Fire and EMS Radio Explained — Alarms, Box Assignments, and Medical Traffic
Fire and EMS dispatch is still open in most of the country. Here is how to follow it — alarm levels, box assignments, apparatus designations, and what medical traffic sounds like.
- How to Find Your Local Police Scanner Feed
A method for locating the feeds that actually cover your area — county before city, which agencies to expect, and what to do when your own town has nothing listed.