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Listening to police radio
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Does anyone here listen to into the frequencies of the emergency services? Can it still be done?! Are we even at a point we can listen online?
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[Deleted User]
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Twas exciting!
Gone digital? Does that mean we can no longer listen in?
I remember when parents bought me and my brother a pair of walkie-talkies. You could occasionally faintly hear conversations from somewhere.
(I know what peeks and pokes are, but how does that relate to receiving police radio?
Used to listen when I was bored. But usually there wasn't anything exciting. Mostly "Alpha 3 go to such and such an address, reports of a domestic incident, occupants shouting" or "Go to (other address) neighbours complaining about a bonfire" (or barking dog)
Never heard a murder or anything dramatic - although I did hear of a fight one night in a night club in town.
I was replying to the poster above me who said it they thought it sad they could still remember frequencies so as a comparison I used another example which involved long numbers in an attempt to show the poster that it's not sad to remember numbers at all.
That ok?
I can also remember listening to other peoples conversations on our cordless telephone.
I doubt that phoning somebody's voicemail and attempting to use "1234" or "0000" as a PIN would work with police radio.
When you could pick it up (and you only ever heard the responding officer, never the CAD) it was legal to listen. If memory serves, it becomes illegal if you acted upon what you heard. So listening in and rushing to your batcave and setting off to crime fight would be illegal.
Also, and I may be wrong, willing to concede to better knowledge, it was illegal to listen to it to evade detection too as this was considered acting on what they heard. However, it was unlikely that you are going to go for that one when you have them for a heftier offence.
As has been said you cannot anymore and if you could it is an offence under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006, though even if you could I would imagine they would only take action if you acted on the messages you heard
I once picked up a helicopter radio on my hi-if system. It flew directly over my house as I was listening to the radio and I could clearly hear the pilot talking and then it went back to what I was listening to.
That may have been the case in your force area, but in mine, West Midlands (YM), talk-through was almost permanently switched on so you could hear both sides of the conversation, with the notable exception of the CMPG (or their predecessors) where you would hear the pips.
Yes, it was the same here as well. You could hear the lot.
I think that would have been the exception. My understanding is that talk-through was generally never transmitted to public access frequencies. Going from memory, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Sussex, Thames Valley and the Met only transmitted one side of the conversation.