The Wildly Popular Police Scanner Goes Silent for Many (2024)

The report crackled across the Indianapolis police radio on a recent morning: Two aggressive pit bulls, no leashes in sight, were roaming, a caller complained. Then came an alert about a motorist, possibly armed, en route to Indianapolis, reportedly with homicidal thoughts.

Later, the police were dispatched to look into reports of overdoses, suicidal people and domestic violence.

Through it all, hundreds of Indianapolis residents listened.

Once accessible to a relatively small number of emergency radio enthusiasts who invested in hardware and developed technical expertise, emergency dispatch channels have garnered huge audiences in recent years as websites and apps made tuning in as easy as turning on the television.

“I just love to listen because I want to know what’s going on,” said Bobbi Sue Hester, an Indianapolis resident who has listened to the police radio at night for 20 years. “I guess I’m a nosybody, you know?”

Ms. Hester may soon lose access to her evening pastime. Indianapolis, where the police channel is among the most listened to in the country, is one of several cities considering curtailing access to the real-time communication between dispatchers and emergency medical workers by encrypting those conversations. Encryption encodes a radio signal in a way that makes it accessible only to authorized users.

Denver, San Francisco, San Diego County, Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Sioux Falls are among the jurisdictions that have already encrypted radio signals to some degree. Minneapolis, whose police department has faced a lot of pressure to be more transparent and accountable, intends to adopt encryption next year.