Police Scanners

[Frogman]

Years ago, like 20 years, I enjoyed listening to a scanner. I recently bought a used one and all I get is fire and ambulance. Is it illegal now to have the frequencies to listen to police and sheriff frequencies? If not, where could I find some. I am not looking for narcotics officers or swat team frequencies, just the standard frequencies. I do not want to break any law.

Thanks for your response(s).

 

[Leadfoot]

No it's not illegal. Most agencies who haven't gone to 700 & 800 Mhz use an inaudible tone to encrypt their traffic, without knowing the code, you don't hear anything.

Most of the "juicy" traffic doesn't come over the radio anymore. In this age of cell phones and data links in cars, its usually sent via wireless between the unit and the dispatch center.

 

[kibb]

^x2

You can look online for these. There was a page by bearcat(?) that had all the trunk frequencies. Trunking scanners are the way to go. You program all the frequencies for a particular department and it automatically follows the transmission. If yours doesn't trunk you may hear one person say something and not catch the rest of the conversation. Police radios will jump around to different frequencies in order to find the best reception.

 

[JBP55]

PM Charlie12.

 

[themcfarland]

what scanner did you get? Look up radioreference.com everything you need..

What scanner did you get and who do you want to listen to exactly, I will get you the freqs... hardly anyone is encrypted.. only JPD and NOPD

 

[nolaradio]

More and more agencies are going encrypted. I recently sold my Uniden HP-1 because JPSO made the switch back in March. I used to be able to monitor them here in Mandeville.
St. Tammany is using a proprietary system that no scanner on the market can receive.
After Katrina, several smaller agencies used federal money to upgrade and join the state of LA system (LATIE). There's still a lot you can listen to. Just not what I want to listen to.
Like the previous poster said, check out www.radioreference.com. Tons of info there.
The more popular listening to online scanner feeds gets, the more agencies will start encrypting their signals. Just look at what happened in Boston. It got to the point that law enforcement had to ask the public to stop tweeting everything overheard.
Let me know if I can help you out with anything b

 

[mcinfantry]

BRPD is encrypted

 

[charlie12]

More and more agencies are going encrypted. I recently sold my Uniden HP-1 because JPSO made the switch back in March. I used to be able to monitor them here in Mandeville.
St. Tammany is using a proprietary system that no scanner on the market can receive.
After Katrina, several smaller agencies used federal money to upgrade and join the state of LA system (LATIE). There's still a lot you can listen to. Just not what I want to listen to.
Like the previous poster said, check out www.radioreference.com. Tons of info there.
The more popular listening to online scanner feeds gets, the more agencies will start encrypting their signals. Just look at what happened in Boston. It got to the point that law enforcement had to ask the public to stop tweeting everything overheard.
Let me know if I can help you out with anything b

That is the problem and some scanner people are doing it to themselves. Just like some of the rub it in your nose stuff with guns screws it up for others.

 

[Leadfoot]

If you've got an iPhone, try the 5-0 Radio app.

It lets you listen to a slew of agencies from across the country, even some local agencies have feeds on there.

There are also websites that stream live feeds from various departments across the country.

Radioreference.com really is the home of anything and everything you ever wanted to know about scanners/scanning.

 

[JR1572]

I can hear JP on mine.

JR1572

 

[mcinfantry]

More and more agencies are going encrypted. I recently sold my Uniden HP-1 because JPSO made the switch back in March. I used to be able to monitor them here in Mandeville.
St. Tammany is using a proprietary system that no scanner on the market can receive.
After Katrina, several smaller agencies used federal money to upgrade and join the state of LA system (LATIE). There's still a lot you can listen to. Just not what I want to listen to.
Like the previous poster said, check out www.radioreference.com. Tons of info there.
The more popular listening to online scanner feeds gets, the more agencies will start encrypting their signals. Just look at what happened in Boston. It got to the point that law enforcement had to ask the public to stop tweeting everything overheard.
Let me know if I can help you out with anything b

which is silly, cause its not like they pull a swat team up to your house you look out the window at the cars and you say 'let me check the 5-0 app' and see if they are coming to get you.

 

[themcfarland]

BRPD is encrypted

which ones, I am listening to everything I could two years ago..

 

[themcfarland]

which is silly, cause its not like they pull a swat team up to your house you look out the window at the cars and you say 'let me check the 5-0 app' and see if they are coming to get you.

NO, the tactical and swat channels are not carried unless you are on a private app like my feed I sometimes use.. from my own scanner over the net back to my phone.. One of the agreements of radio reference feed is you agree not to feed tactical or swat.. I have had many conversations with the owner who went to school here at LSU.

 

[charlie12]

which ones, I am listening to everything I could two years ago..

Me too

 

[charlie12]

Most of the time I'm listening to EBRSO north, LSP, LPSO unless something else is going on I want to hear. East Feliciana when go up there..

I sometime like to listen to those DSPD guys.

 

[themcfarland]

^x2

You can look online for these. There was a page by bearcat(?) that had all the trunk frequencies. Trunking scanners are the way to go. You program all the frequencies for a particular department and it automatically follows the transmission. If yours doesn't trunk you may hear one person say something and not catch the rest of the conversation. Police radios will jump around to different frequencies in order to find the best reception.

Almost right, they jump around for a pre arranged time slot for capacity.. the reception isnt going to change much if they jump only 12.5 k or so.. The jumping or trunking is a pre arranged order of frequencies designed to allow multiple users to use the same few frequencies instead of keeping them to just one set of users.

 

[mcinfantry]

I was told all 4 brpd districts. No scanner to confirm

 

[nolaradio]

I spent a whole weekend in Metaire monitoring back in April and didn't hear anything from JPSO on two different scanners. That's when I decided to sell them. They may have opened the system up some since then. Honestly, those two scanners were collecting dust and the fact that I could no longer hear JPSO was a good excuse to sell them both and use the money for guns and ammo.
Apps like the 5-0 app grap the audio from the feeds on radioreference.com (broadcastify.com). There's also a little bit of lag over the internet. Sometimes as much as 40-45 seconds on the feed that I provide.
One thing I could never get my wife to understand is that it does no good to ask me to turn on the scanner to see what's happening AFTER you come across a police scene. If you don't hear the dispatch call, most of the time yuo will have no idea why the cops are working a scene.

Back to the statewide system... like I said earlier, most of the smaller agencies have moved to the state of LA system. They will most likely remain unencrypted for a while if that's how they are now. Even though it's just a software change to encrypt, from what I understand it still cose beaucoup money to have Motorola or whoever else make the switch. Besides the fact that law enforcement doesn't want you to listen to them, more and more agencies are worried about personal privacy issues. Years ago I used to listen to EJ ambulances calling in very personal details to the ER doctors when transporting patients.

Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot to listen to in the state. But there will always be something that you will want to listen to that you will not be able to receive. For me, it's JPSO and St. Tammany SO.

 

[themcfarland]

I was told all 4 brpd districts. No scanner to confirm

They might be mis informed.. Let me try to explain it a little more..
The protocol is apco 25.. and unless you can specifically decode apco 25 they may seen encrypted..

Put it this way, before the apps, you could get all the codes for free car washes, passcodes to gated places and many, many other things.. when it was told to the guys that it could be heard, they said, but, but , but its encrypted.. NO its not...

I have an app, that uses a tv receiver that is usb. I plug in trunk tracker program, throw in a virtual port program and map it to the sound card... I can listen to trunked radio using a pc... It wont be very long at all before the encrypted stuff will be decrypted on the fly..

 

[mcinfantry]

I would love to still listen....