mobile police scanners

[G.T. Smith]

Just wondering if it is legal to have a police scanner in your vehicle. Maybe some of you that are law enforcement (I hate acronyms) would know. What I have is a hand held scanner that I connect to an externally mounted antenna. It is still basically a hand held, but I wonder if it would be called mobile when in my truck. It has alerted me from time to time of hazards, like wrecks, and emergency vehicles ahead so I use it. I have also heard police that were behind me running my plate, but I have never had a traffic ticket in my 44 years of driving. I guess if I do get stopped and they see it I'll find out if it is legal or not. Just thought it maight be a little cheaper here. I live in Mo. but travel to OK. alot. thanx,
gordon

[sheriff51]

Legal in most states. Kansas for sure and I suspect in most states here in the middle. But if it has a transmit option be sure to NEVER use it. That will get you in trouble anywhere

[Grog]

Ask here for most of your answers.
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[Faulkner]

Enjoy your scanner while you can. With the nationwide transition to AWINS scanners will pretty much be obsolete for listening to emergency response in the not so distant future.

[Grog]

Originally Posted by Faulkner

Enjoy your scanner while you can. With the nationwide transition to AWINS scanners will pretty much be obsolete for listening to emergency response in the not so distant future.

You mean this?
Arkansas Wireless Information Network (AWIN) Trunking System, Statewide, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies


AR would have to have some money to make the rest of the country switch to that




....but really folks.... There will always be places you can't monitor...Opensky, full encrypted (wonder why the police feel the need to hide?), nexhell, etc.

But as long as you have the cash to spend if an area upgrades, you'll have plenty to listen to. Some areas (or states) are still on simple analog VHF which is about the simplest thing to monitor around.


There will also always be people who say "you can't listen to us, we're on ^&%$#$^ radio system". Just because they say it, don't mean it's true.

[Jellybean]

You will want to check the laws in your specific areas. Some states do have specific laws regarding them, even if they're not illegal altogether.
I recall some areas prohibit having it connected to the vehicle in any way, either by an external antenna, such as yours, or by a power cord. In some of the areas that do have laws regarding them, you can get around some of them if you happen to have an amateur radio license.

[Damn Yankee]

Be sure to learn your Signal And 10 Codes or you won't know what you are listening to half of the time. In my dept their are over 70 10 codes and 90 Signal Codes to know.

In a hour I will be 10-80 going to a church and will have to Signal 65 before I get there. When I am10-23 I will be 10-06 for a 10-57. The numbers in the codes mean different things to different agency's

Right now I am 10-37 at home.

Y'all be careful now hear.

[DeadAye]

Opensky, full encrypted (wonder why the police feel the need to hide?)

Some nice developer - Who lives at least an hour from here - bought the cotton field down the street from me and put in a bunch of Section-8 trailers. It was pretty nice for a little while but is now turning Ghetto pretty quickly. I'll also point out that we live in an area with nice, old houses (our house is well over 100 years old), in a previously calm quiet neighborhood.
No Mo!
Gangs of kids who have to YELL at each other while walking down the street. Gangs of kids who actually walk down our street loading their semi-auto magazines. Unbelievably LOUD car stereos, now a lot of them are going to SUVs cause you just can't get a big enough amp and speakers in a car Etc, etc, etc.
Now, back to the question:

wonder why the police feel the need to hide?

The above mentioned *kids* have a network of kind. You (or I) call the police - The dispatcher calls a car - Someone that monitors the police freqs calls the group on a cell phone and they are GONE before the cops can respond. BTW - Response time here is in the 1 to 2 minute range!

[n4zov]

Originally Posted by Faulkner

Enjoy your scanner while you can. With the nationwide transition to AWINS scanners will pretty much be obsolete for listening to emergency response in the not so distant future.

You can say that again! I live near one of the Army Chemical Weapon Disposal sites and the Feds funded our local EMA with about $25-million of your tax payer dollars to completely replace every public service radio system in three counties. The new trunking system is digitized and encrypted so that nobody can listen in.

[Firehouse]

Originally Posted by Damn Yankee

Be sure to learn your Signal And 10 Codes or you won't know what you are listening to half of the time. In my dept their are over 70 10 codes and 90 Signal Codes to know.

Once your agency adopts NIMS they are mandated to using "plain talk." We switched over to it a couple of years ago but our PD still refuses to do so. The winds of change start as a breeze.

[CW Spook]

With the advent of privacy legislation and the aftermath of 9/11, a lot of things have changed in the public service communications world. Digital modes, both voice and data, are becoming more prevalent which makes encryption much easier and more likely to be used, particularly for sensitive information. Some of the digital modes can be received by the higher-end scanners, some cannot, even if they are not encrypted. There is no scanner capable of decryption. In spite of that, there is still an amazing amount of things to be heard. The RadioReference database is the best single source of the programming info you need for any specific area. Oh...and mobile scanners ARE allowed in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma (and Iowa) as far as I know. I have at least one (sometimes 2 or 3) scanner running 24-7 at home or in the vehicles.

[Grog]

Originally Posted by Firehouse

Once your agency adopts NIMS they are mandated to using "plain talk."

That's only for interops with other agencies. That being said, more and more are going to plain talk anyway.

[beemerphile]

I think they are 50 state legal if you have an amateur license (I do) and are not committing a crime (I'm usually not). There is an iphone app that puts feeds from hundreds of PS systems on your phone. My little town of Athens GA (which is a trunking system) was there.

[whitecoyote]

There are aps. you can now down load, and streem Police calls through your cell phone.

[Jellybean]

My favorit source of frequencies for my scanners is the FCC website, they have stuff Radioreference would never bother with.

While no scanners have decryption, there is, or at least was, an add-on device that would do it. There was only one dept. in my area that used encryption and they went digital, so I never tried it.

[Grog]

Originally Posted by Jellybean

My favorit source of frequencies for my scanners is the FCC website, they have stuff Radioreference would never bother with.

RR might not have everything listed because it's user submitted info and there are lots of "dead" FCC licenses.


The FCC listed a company as having several 49mhz licenses after they had switched to a 900mhz TRS. My last county of record had quite a few things that were licensed but not used, plus a couple simplex frequencies that were not licensed but used quite often


Plus you can join the forums and ask whatever you want to, just like here on the S&W forum

[Jellybean]

If you use the "advanced search" feature, you can exclude dead licenses. But, just because a license is dead doesn't mean it's forgotten. I think they have up to two years after their expiration to renew.

If a business does change radios or radio service, they will have licenses for both. Unfortunately they do not cover pirate staions.

The advance search also allows you to look for licensed stations in your area geographicly, by Zip code, by name and etc. It also offers different search paramaters that you can control to help you in other ways. One nice feature is that it gives antenna locations and output power so you can tell if you are going to have a chance to pick up that small business across town or not. If used properly you can find some pretty interesting stuff.

No they don't have a forum, which may not always be a bad thing. I'm not saying Radiorefernce is bad, I use them too, along with several other very good sites that are more regional. One thing the FCC doesn't have is federal/military frequencies. But they can tell you if the kids using the GMRS radio frequencies are licensed or not. Not that you even have to ask.

Edited to add: The information at Radioreference comes from the members in your area. To find them they either get lucky and catch them while searching, or they go to the FCC site, get all the frequencies listed and weed them out. I prefer to not wait on someone else, and some areas may not have that many RR members.

[wrrn73]

There are thousands of frequencies being used and sent through the air at all times. All a police scanner does is receive some of these frequencies. It is just like the radio in your car or truck. There is nothing illegal about doing this. It is what you do with this information that might make it illegal. Commercial vehicles fall under different laws and can be illegal.

[enidpd804]

You're OK in OK for your purposes.

Title 21. Crimes and Punishments
Chapter 48 - Miscellaneous and General Provisions
Section 1214 - Radio Sets Capable of Receiving on Police Frequencies - Unlawful Uses - Penalty

It shall be unlawful for any person to operate a mobile radio capable of receiving transmissions made by any law enforcement agency for illegal purposes or while in the commission of a crime and not otherwise and any person violating the provisions hereof shall be guilty of a felony upon conviction thereof shall be punished by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for not more than three (3) years, or fined by not more than Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00), or by both such imprisonment and fine.