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What is a good reasonable priced police scanner to use at home?

I dont know.


Most agencies are digital now.....lots of them are encrypted too.

Just download the app on your phone called Broadcastify (sp).

It's free!

What does it monitor, specifically?

I would not want all that racket.

I use the same on my computer. Covers all county emergency services frequencies from a single source. Have to listen to a 30 second commercial when you first fire it up. However, as noted, it's free....

Most services a trunked. Unless you have the trunk key, you can't listen on a scanner.

Everything. It is a crowd sourced scanner feed. Scanner enthusiasts setup a scanner and place the feed online. So you get to listen to their trunked, digital, encoded, blah, blah, blah feed. You can also listen to air, maritime, disaster, ham, etc all over the world. I use the police scanner app, which pulls the feeds from brodcastify and makes them easy to use. It gives you top feeds from wherever you are, plus most listened to, sorted by genre etc. you can be anywhere and listen to a feed from anywhere else.

Dixie Dud: Unless you live WAY out in the country a police scanner will be suckin it big time.
Most all departments use computer screen dedicated communications.
Good luck in your quest.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

You probably won't find anything under $400. Unless you're lucky and live in a area that still uses analog. Most public service agencies are P-25 or DMR (both digital) and use a Trunked system. Some agencies or talk groups are encrypted and can't be heard on any scanner or feed.

I have a coupe of Uniden digital scanners, we very little encrypted traffic here only a couple of SWAT type talk groups. I have no issues scanning trunked systems. The new radios are quite complicated and the best already have huge databases installed on a micro SD card. Put in your zip code and start scanning. Radio Reference (same folks that offer the Broadcastify live feeds) maintain the database with updates weekly.

The problem with Broadcastify and other apps is that you can't hold on a talk group to follow a conversation (like a chase etc).

I don't live in the country, I live in a city of about 70,000 and it is a college town that is getting more liberal. I wanted to scan police after the election, especially if Trump wins.

Thanks, Pard.

I believe that the duck of dearth is the final authority on this subject. If you were in an Iron Lung a scanner might be entertaining. Is there still an underground source for a translation of the 10 code?


mike r

Yep.

Use your phone. I use an app called scanner radio. it has every police/fire/rescue frequency in the country and its free

I have to listen to enough of that schitt the way it is.

No authority, but have 25 years experience.

I use "Scanner Radio" (AKA, "Police 5-0").

Availability to jurisdictions varies. More and more are going to digital, encrypted channels. Not to mention Mission Critical Push To Talk (MCPTT) which is more or less "radio over IP", for the layman.

None of those are available to any of these apps. So to say "you can get every radio in the country" is not even remotely accurate.

Generally, you can get the unencrypted, P.25, old, legacy channels. The list is shrinking, and I have noticed during big events local LEO move to "TAC" channels to keep bad guys from listening in.

Enjoy it while you can. Some day, it will all be encrypted and unavailable to us.

Jeeze, can you imagine a scanner in one ear and Hanity in the other ?

And with nothing in between
Grins .