Police Scanner keeps an open line to emergency communications

The Police Scanner iPhone app lets you hone in on hundreds of emergency-radio frequencies, from police to EMT to firefighters. Streams can be played or paused, or you can listen in on a live stream. Whether you are looking for the location of all the speed traps in the area or looking for a possible news tip, receiving the streams on your iPhone makes it simpler to tap into emergency communications.

Other uses for the Police Scanner iPhone application include volunteer emergency workers that may not be able to afford the expensive radio equipment necessary for maintaining communications with their team, or even volunteer workers helping to search the area for a missing person.

The downside of Police Scanner is that the technology required to provide emergency streams on your iPhone is not supported by all dispatchers. However, apps like Police Scanner may encourage dispatchers to upgrade in order to support their volunteer community.

For now, this means that not all areas are covered, but new ones are being added by Police Scanner developers on a regular basis.

Another Flaw: There is also no way to archive streams in order to catalog things like speed traps, so I would not recommend Police Scanner for this purpose.

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