Last of the scanners: Are police security measures and new technologies killing an obsession?
Last edited Tue Jan 1, 2019, 09:49 AM - Edit history (1)
I know Alan Henney. I'm on his mailing list. When I listen, I spend my time listening to trains. I have a 100-channel Sportcat 180 scanner in my backpack right now, all charged up and ready to go. Railroad transmissions are still analog, as is aircraft radio traffic.
In the print edition of Monday's Washington Post, the article was on page B1 of the Metro section, below the fold.
Last of the scanners: Are police security measures and new technologies killing an American obsession?
....
By Terrence McCoy
December 29
In a white house on a quiet, leafy street in Takoma Park, Md., lives a man who listens to nothing but mayhem. He is remarkable not because of his appearance — tall, thin, black hair — but for what he has around him at all times: scanners. ... On this day, the scanners of Alan Henney — whose tweets of bedlam are followed by dozens of Washington journalists — were going full blast. Eleven cluttered his coffee table and living room, all tuned to different radio frequencies from across the region. There was the chirp of D.C. Fire and EMS responders. The prattle of dispatch in Prince George’s County. And the broadcast of Montgomery County officials telling of a traffic accident, which, Henney concluded solemnly, “doesn’t sound very good.”
Something else that didn’t sound very good: the garbled noise coming from one scanner, obscuring D.C. police chatter. To Henney it sounded like death — not the death caused by crime or traffic accidents, but the demise of a passion.
Across the United States, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people like Henney who listen to official communications on radio signals, sifting through a morass of chatter for interesting news. Some pester crime reporters with tips. Others, such as Henney, showcase the hard-won news items — like gem hunters would a stone — on their social media feeds. But soon, Henney fears, all of that may end. And what will become of the scanner enthusiasts when there’s nothing left to scan?
....
In the D.C. region, the keeper of the scanners’ code, and a source of stability in these turbulent scanning times, is Henney — director of the Capitol Hill Monitors group, publisher of the Capitol Hill Monitor periodical and author of the 534-page Washington-Baltimore Scanner Almanac. He spends his days at home now, tending to his ailing 87-year-old mother, planning annual regional scanner gatherings, listening to the channels he still gets and tweeting updates in the staccato voice of a just-the-facts-ma’am newsman. Meanwhile, he apportions blame for the possible collapse of his obsession.
....
Terrence McCoy covers social issues in urban and rural America. He joined The Washington Post in 2014. Follow https://twitter.com/terrence_mccoy
Not to be outdone:
By Rachel Rice St. Louis Post-Dispatch Dec 29, 2018
When dispatchers radioed St. Charles emergency services to tell them that a man was stranded in the catwalks beneath the Blanchette Bridge that carries Interstate 70 over the Missouri River, scanner hobbyist Shawn Willis heard the radio transmission the moment it crackled across the airwaves. Never mind that he was in the shower. A radio was on his bathroom counter, and he was tuned in, as he usually is several hours every day.
While Willis dried off, dressed and headed to the scene of the Oct. 23 incident, fellow enthusiast Richard Survant continuously posted details to the St. Charles County Scanner Traffic account on Twitter, SCC Scanner Traffic, as he heard them. As firefighters orchestrated a high-angle rescue, Survant and Willis heard the drama unfold in real time and relayed details to their many followers on social media.
....
= new reply since forum marked as read
Most police/fire comms here are unencrypted, but they do go into that mode when they think they need to.
I used to have an AOR AR-1000 (that one picked up pretty much everything from DC to the visible light spectrum, with no gaps in coverage <g>
. I upgraded to the GRE several years ago when we had an arsonist running around the neighborhood, so I could take advantage of the trunked system that the locals had switched over to. The night that there was a gas explosion near here (it flattened 3 businesses, and rattled something off of a shelf here - it sounded like a lightning strike right outside my front door - from 5 blocks away. and our house faces the opposite direction). Turned on the scanner and was kept fully aware of what was happening.
It also comes in very handy when I get a call either from a number I don't recognize, or from an obvious scammer. I turn it on, and answer the phone, "North Precinct - Fraud Division" with police calls going on in the background and they usually can't hang up fast enough, and I never hear from that number again! (We are down to *maybe* one scam call every 2 weeks or so now, instead of multiples per day.)
