Police Dept Scanner 07/16/21
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Well, not a scanner per se, but a VHF HT with some local emergency
frequency programmed in to the channel list. And of course, setup to
lock out transmitting!
I've been listening only for a couple days. I live in a small city, so
there isn't a lot of activity... but even so, there's more activity
than on the local 2m/70cm repeaters :/
Today, I've listened in on a few traffic stops. I don't know a lot
about the procedure, but it seems to be:
- Run a check on the license plate
- Verify the plate matches the license provided
- Check if the individual has any previous violations
- Report back to dispatch on action
The last one was a little surprising. The officers let dispatch know
what they decided to do. I guess that's good, then dispatch can
enter it into a database or something, but I would have thought
that reporting would have come at some other point, rather than
over-the-air.
Two stood out this morning. The first one was a young woman who was
pulled over, expired license (by about a month), previous offenses,
and two other issues that I can't recall (registration/tags, etc.)
From the brief report back, it sounded like she was let go with a
verbal warning.
Second one was another young woman, for a "traffic violation". Didn't
say what. She came back with no previous issues. Also let go with a
verbal warning.
I guess the first one surprised me, the second one didn't. Media, at
the present, has been painting the police as monsters who just want to
abuse the public at every turn. The first case above, I believe the
officer could have had the lady's car towed, and processed her for
driving on an expired license. Maybe I'm wrong on that. He could
certainly have issued a citation. But, he didn't. No citation, just a
warning to go get her act together, it seems.
I'm sure things get a lot worse, of course. And I'm also sure that
things get a lot worse on an exponential curve when there is violence
or danger involved... they're only human after all.
Listening to the emergency responder channels isn't interesting enough
(for me) to become a hobby, but I'm glad to have them programmed in.
