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.