How To Listen To Trunked Police Radio And Why Im Done 

My understanding is that it is illegal per FCC rules to encrypt all frequencies used by local agencies. They can, however, encrypt tactical channels. I worked dispatch in the past when we used straight analogue. The public could hear our bolo's, emergencies, everything. We would get all kinds of assistance from folk out in scannerland who'd call in telling us where a wanted person or vehicle was in real time. Now, nothing. LE has driven an unnecessary wedge between themselves and the citizens. As well, I think the citizens have a right to know if there is criminal activity, manhunt, chase, etc going on in their area in real time.

I have no problem with public services going digital, it is when they encrypt channels that are not tactical. To me, these transmissions fall within the scope of the public's right to know. Gotta watch the watchers.

I worked for a large dept that decided to trunk and encrypt. Having a commo background, I asked to sit on the steering committee. I tried, BEGGED them to not encrypt except for tactical team ops until I was removed from the board. Then there are reports of kickbacks and other politics that was driving this so it went way beyond officer safety. To the posters who said it was the public scanner-poaching, not true and in fact the public were a great help. Instead it truly was big govt wanting to be less accountable to the public. As a side note, I had a dial-tune regency as my first public service receiver! From there, BC III, then 101 getting my new copy of Police Call from Radio Shack every year. I would record on an old VCR using just the audio input because they would do 16 hours. To the poster who said file FOIA for the key: it rolls from a random generator and would take the NSA to break and that would only work until it rolled again. When the ppl fear the government...

We need to have this done to our phones, emails and anything else they can snoop on. Then push to make it illegal for a public servant to listen to.

Actually, you don't need two separate dongles to use unitrunker just as long as the Control channel and Voice channel fall within the max bandwidth capability of the dongle.

Really sucks that you have to give up on this project. You had a very similar setup to mine. My area has a digital trunking system which luckily isn't encrypted. It's fun to just sit here and listen for hours. Looking forward to any future content you put on here about HAM Radio if you decide to post it here.

That really sucks man. I've been following CO for a while and I got in on your RFO as soon as you launched the project. I was looking forward to the great things you'd be sharing with us, such a shame. Good luck with your other projects and I'll keep an eye on here to see what else you come up with.

It's actually illegal for them to encrypt their frequencies. It falls under the same problem as if they ran their body cams with duct tape over the lens and mic. They tried to make police scanners illegal, and the supreme court ruled that all over air communication made by public entities have to be easily rx'd by the general public without encryption. There were a few exemptions, i.e... The military during classified communications. You may have just won the lottery if you sue them.

Bummer dude! I'll sub anyway...just incase you put out anything... since this type-o-content really tickles my fancy. I've always had a itch regarding subject matter on RF. Though- and you helped big time here in this ol video- you mentioned that this is how the city works members from police, ambulance, garbage, mail, and a huge plethora more - well, how they communicate. See, I am harassed/ gang stalked by the above mentioned- I already battle anxiety and depression so it's mega draining. But hey, at least it's given me something to get my mind off the hideouts acts portrayed by them- The wonderful world of SDR has been a treat so far- and it's content like yours that really helps. Take care.

I feel your pain. I live in St. Lucie county on the east coast of Florida and my local system recently switched to the P25 system and I'm pissed. I understand wanting better officer safety but I feel this has gone too far. They say that want transparency but them they go do stuff like this. If you say anything negative about the switch in RR they will ban you.

Well finally the answer to why my hand held police frequencies are silent. Thank you

I used to love listening to the old analogue mobile phones on scanners back in the early 90s before they went to digital. I used to hear all sorts of saucy stuff like Guys arranging to see their mistresses after work all the way to a married couple breaking up on air!

Well Bryan it was great while it lasted, as the saying goes.."all good things come to and end" I loved it while you did it!! Very entertaining!! Thanks for your efforts!!

Got to love that American transparency from or public servants.

I hope you continue the channel with your HAM radio adventures.

Police and other public servant communication systems over here in the Netherlands have been made digital and encrypted many years ago. Since I'm fairly young, I've never been able to tune in to their radio communications, since I was just a toddler when that switchover happened. Really a shame, I'd love to have tuned in and just listen to their communications during events, not to record or to transmit and disrupt their communications. But alas, us citizens apparently aren't allowed to anymore. And it also shows that the digital systems aren't as bomb proof as the analog ones, since during several serious incidents the current digital system just crapped out on the public servants. So it not only keeps citizens out, it also keeps the public servants out on crucial moments. Just gotta love governments.

Been watching TWO for over a year now. Recently became interested in Ham radio and guess who comes up on my RU-vid searches. Small world I guess. Fire Depts respond to more EMS calls than anything else and as a result we transmit a lot of medical info back and forth with the hospitals. We had to have all our transmission encrypted to comply with HIPA regulations.

If you don't want me to listen to your transmission then keep your signal off of my antenna. Once it hits my antenna it becomes my signal and I will do anything that I want with it. This includes demodulating it and analysing the demodulized signal.Encrypting sigmals is a very controversial subject. I don't mind building my own hardware and developing my own software to accomplish something once I decide to do it either.

They've all been moving to that over the last few years. One budget at a time. They were sold those systems when the department of homeland security gave funding for the switch. That use to be part of my job until I resigned.

Hey I like Cigars and tech stuff too! Such a pleasant surprise to find this channel

I didn’t quite understand what you were talking about when you said you needed 2 receivers. Say I wanted to just monitor 1 p25 frequency, and no others, could I get away with one?

You know your stuff brother. Our city IT department could use your knowledge. Seriously.

I would suggest using a 90 degree adapter for your laptop audio cable to reduce the chance of cable or jack damage. Repairing a headphone jack on your laptop can get pretty expensive when it's so easy to avoid.

I get so upset with encryption. Public safety departments are too damn secretive and this drives a stake between them and the citizens they work for. It creates distrust and and frustration. You'd think during times like these they'd want more transparency. The Federal government and radio salesmen push it and departments eat it up.

Same things happened in St Louis City, tho fire is not yet encrypted. I did find that not all PD radios are encrypted, there are quite a few I am able to hear. Not the dispatch side but the car or HT side. I set unitrunker to listen for individual radios rather than talk groups. Still not as good as being in the clear but I'm able to pick up bits and pieces, just something to check out on your end, never know..

It's a public safety issue that puts us in danger not knowing what is going on when systems are encrypted. No department needs every channel encrypted, in fact, no department needs more than a couple encrypted channels. For those that have encrypted you can fight it but you need to go to council meetings and the media. Some have even gone to court and won. It's also a risk for outside agencies who can't communicate or monitor the channels. And as found they have issues with encryption even locally putting first responders in danger. Unless you fight it, nothing will change though.

I'm sure that by now you know this, but another reason for going digital, well two reasons, is that a digital radio can multiplex the channels. That means they can stack multiple radios on a single frequency, similar to how your home LAN can stack multiple devices on your network, or a better analogy is how USB can manage 256 devices on a single port. So, their capacity on a single carrier went up exponentially, which is why today you can have a radio in every garbage truck and water/power truck, etc. -- whatever your county supports, they can talk to you via radio. There are other features that can now make digital radios seem like magic to county managers, but I'll defer to your knowledge. It's your channel, but I wanted to mention frequency stacking. Your SDR video popped up on my home page as I've been learning about this interesting tech. I hope that you're still UToobing. 😊 The second reason is noise -- it sounds much better. Remember when cell phones were analog? The signal-to-noise ratio was often 1 or more, which is why engineers measured it on the dB scale. When digital towers and phones came to town, it was like the difference between seeing in thick fog and a clear day.

Hi, I'm in Pinellas. It has been a long time since you made this. I am new to hobby. Do you know if I can listen to Pinellas Sheriff with SdS100?

Have you tried SDR Trunk? In my county some things are encrypted while others aren't. It makes it really easy to deal with and has super easy import from radioreference

Hey! You’re my cigar guy!! I was very confused for a second...

CPU Utilage! I like it. :) I came here because I'm a ham and my wife asked me if I could listen to the police. I had to tell her about the encryption thing :(.

here in Algeria, i recently got into SDR scanning, the police still use analog, but i heard police talk to each others and refer to a certain device to continue the talk about a case over tetrapol device, they also use cellular when they want to have privacy

what kinda linux were you using my guy most linux distros have terminal tools for multiplexing audio and i believe audacity can as well

I was actually surprised they were still on the analog system. Most of us have been on truncated digital for a few years now. I too would like to see you do your spin on some HAM oriented videos if you're interested.

in my city I used to be able to listen to a trunk tracked frequency using a bearcat mobile or Bearcat handheld scanner and recently the city has converted to a Motorola digital utilizing a CDMA cell phone frequency that is unable to be tracked by a scanner however lately it does seem with a brand new Bearcat scanner I am able to pick up the trunk and track frequencies using the traditional 800 and 900 frequencies. so I'm a bit confused if they are utilizing the CDMA frequency how am I hearing them on my trunked radio scanner. also I was confused as to what trunked tracking actually means as far as I was concerned I was under the impression it involves a certain frequency switching from time to time I'm also under the impression that when I do hear certain situations engaging in say a police chase over the radio it does appear that they switch to another frequency possibly a tactical Channel that is untraceable or un trackable with a traditional scanner I wonder if this is true?

how did you get the home computer audio into the labtop on the bike?

Wow, that was fast. Too bad, I know you were starting to get into it. I watched most of them, interesting stuff. They must have had it ready to go prior to your getting started, You're absolutely right, there's no way that they could have done it in a week. Going to have to find another hobby now, ever thought about trying Cigars, I hear that's pretty cool. LOL.

What type of handheld scanner would you recommend?

Happened here in Finland as well, although couple of years ago. Police and rescue services went to a digital & encrypted radio system. Oh well, not much you can do about it.

Would you have any tips on trying to run this type of set up on an android tablet? Just recently added a CB to my car and i was looking to add an SDR hooked up to a tablet as well. Eventually making it work as a police scanner.

Hey I have a question. I have a situation where I need to intercept a signal. I’m not sure the medium of transmission so I need to see everything. Can you give me some advice on how to do this?

The joke is on them, they can't hear MY encrypted communications either. Two can play that game. GOTCHA!!!

Do you still have those videos on your page?

What would happen if somebody tried to illegally transmit on some of these frequencies with a modified transmitter. Would the radio system be able to circumvent or would it not even matter?

I totally feel your pain. I have spent hundreds on radio equipment over the years and after getting the BCD396XT a couple of years ago the state I am in has part of their system in phase 1 and part phase 2. (I had no idea at the time as digital was new to me) I feel they will eventually go all the way with p2 tho and in itself is just as bad as it will cost us another $500.+ AND if you need update software another $100+ ea it is really becoming a rich mans game and what is worse we are paying the taxes so they can do it. I.E. they put police & fire fighter pensions on the ballot and guess what they figured out most made to much to get it..really! do you think they would give us the money back??? NO. to top that off a couple of years went by and I guess they thought we had our stupid hats on and asked for another increase on that same pension.

You have 2 people to blame for this situation. 1st is Motorola. Motorola has pushed digital encryption on radio systems throughout the country. Part of it is the Department of Homeland Security getting everyone encrypted for safety sake. There really haven't been any demonstrable situations where people have interfered with digital trucking systems or even analog tracking systems for that matter to such an extent as to be completely disruptive. But there is an individual and a website that has brought this to the fore front. Lindsay Blaine and Radio Reference. Anyone that is into scanning knows this website and the fact that it has the frequencies and the specific codes used by specific entities on the trunk radio system. Such as Citywide police frequency one. Countywide mutual Aid frequency 3. Etc. Lindsay has been warned over the years as he has made money hand over fist that he was going to force Police Department's to encrypt their Communications because he made it so easy for people to listen to police broadcasts on nothing but their cell phone. There's still no proof that criminals have been using their cell phones to listen while committing crimes but he brought this to the forefront. All because he wanted to make a dime off of it. Had he stayed low key this probably wouldn't be the issue that it is today. My county has recently gone to encryption and I can't listen to anything. I can listen to the fire department but I'm not really into that. They're not encrypted yet. Except for the ALS back and forth to the hospital's. That's for HIPAA. But the point is is that Motorola pushed the technology and a private individual made a buck selling the information that allowed people to listen. You didn't even need to know anything. All you had to do was download a file for your particular scanner and use a piece of software to load it and your scanner would be automatically programmed for you. In fact the new Uniden scanners plug directly into RadioReference to get their database once a week. Thank you Lindsay for destroying a hobby that many of us have enjoyed for years. I hope you made enough money in the process. You thought only of yourself and not what you were doing to the hobby nationwide.

Wait a while. Someone will figure it out. I miss listening to my local police dept.

Just curious have you tried … DSD Decoding Digital Voice with RTL-SDR as a Radio Scanner RU-vid user Geoff Wolf shows a video where he uses RTL-SDR as a police scanner to listen to public safety P25 digital radio using DSD, SDRSharp and virtual audio cable. Posted before you mentioned it illegal, so I’ll guess no.

Transitioning from analog to digital is expensive and requires a lot of planning between the Sheriff's Office and any local police departments. I can assure you it was a coincidence. I'm surprised they encrypted every channel they use? There are likely hundreds of channels. Usually only a handful are encrypted due to cost.

Yes you can legally decrypt any over there air transmissions . The rub comes > You cannot legally share the decrypted information .

You're the man keep doing what u do.

That sucks they went off air, it's been like that here in UK since the 90's :-( the good old days!

Dude! You look like me! We could be twins. Also, the transition from analog to digital+encryption would be months (if not years) in the process. Municipalities have to plan for the monies ;-). Check your city council meeting notes and proposals, for leads. Here in Florida we have the "Sunshine Law" which means they can't back door these things least they be "personally liable". This really does stop a lot of hanky panky. I'd like to see a national sunshine law.

Amazing! I am in awe of the tech you have going!! I would love to have such an Livestream for my helmet!!

How would you use it to "tune in" to a celluar TOWER LTE frequency to improve signal strength and then use a repeater to broadcast locally in your home?

Most public safety communications that use DVP/DES are very hard to de-encrypt. It really is illegal to de-encrypt them. Also it is illegal in some states to use a scanner in a vehicle.

In my area they are using the NEC Ipassolink system with rolling encryption that can be changed every day or even every minute the system uses a OTA programming which mean all radios can be selectively programmed or reprogrammed for individual purposes or group operations on any given moment, this can even compartmentalize secure communications within there own departments so as to keep "a need to know" fully secure,this came at a cost of around $600 million +, i have seen the encryption described in a video..blew my mind... we have no chance.. update... all services here are moving across to this secure network.. (NSW Australia)

Are the radio messages open to freedom information act requests?

I have yet to find an SDR program that can work to listen to nonencrypted digital trunked system that a simple radio shack scanner will. Do the digital radio shack pro108 scanners have dual tuners to make this work?

What standard are they using brother? P-25? (APCO P-25) w/ENC on? (oft used without encryption - sometimes accidently eg one user in a talkgroup accidently turns off encryption via button on their radio, thusly taking everyone off encryption and usually nobody notices it's no longer encrypted)

So how is it that I see law enforcement agencies on broadcastify, but their system is trunked how are they getting the frequencies and communications and broadcasting it to us? How can I go about doing that not so much for broadcasting but listening

I have a question. Is it possible to broadcast with encryption PRIVATELY since the police are allowed to do it?

Question im listening to police n my laptop but can't receive them on my police whistler scanner but I can hear other cities far away they haven't gone encrypted because I'm hearing them on my laptop any ideas

I guess the ONLY good thing is you didn't have an expensive scanner you had to dump. Uniden's current offering, the SDS200 base/mobile scanner is a $700 digital receiver and all it takes is the one agency you want to monitor to go encrypted and your $700 scanner is now rendered USELESS. I just sold my Uniden BCD996XT, which was their flagship model several years ago, as my local police switched to P25 Phase II. I sold my then $500 scanner for HALF what I paid for it (after fees even less than that). Scanning is a losing game today.

I believe that would come under Murphy's Law... 'Nuff said!!!... Just just happened to come across your video didn't realize it was years old LOL good thing you didn't go out and get a $700 scanner and have that happen. I used scanners for years to make a living. Cops may be encrypted but you have fire department and EMS that tells just about everything you want to know if it's something big. Thanks for posting

Can you link me to the specific dongle that you are using because I cant seem to find it

I just bought an SDR dongle to listen to police, ems and aircraft radio signals. Looks like I'm a couple years too late. At least it wasn't expensive.

Neat setup, Thanks for sharing!

how are you sure it's encrypted? P25 phase 2 is different. It has smaller channel blocks, doubling system capacity. If you're trying to decode to channels as one it looks like garbage to the digital to analog converter

hello i have one qwestion: Why is a signal always at the center of the spectrum?? and if you move arround the spectrum, it always keep at the center??

the police radios here in uk switched to Tetra radios few yrs back. laws are little different in uk.... but I did read a paper ages ago about how in theory it would be possible to listen to encrypted tetra. in the UK police tetra is managed by a mobile phone company named “O2 airwave“ the encryption key changes on a regular basis so even with loads if computer processing power if you crack the key by packet sniffing by the time you got the key it would have changed. But some of the radios have a SIM card that can be removed just like a mobile phone. it is possible providing you could borrow a radio for a short time to remove the sim card and clone the sim card to a blank sim. Then place the clone sim into another Tetra radio. However some problems occur as a result of this. when your clone radio connects to the O2 Airwave network it will disconnect the master and allow your clone to connect. So the clone and master would be fighting each other to connect. also even if you turned off Gps in the radio settings you could still be tracked the same way as the cell network of mobile phones depending on the size of the cell to the accuracy of a upto 100meters. I cant remember who wrote it but it was a intresting read showing it was and is possible but the risk of getting caught out ways the benifits. I assume that if a clone was suspected on the network that they can deactivate that account and assign a new sim card to that radio.

Damn! We got the same problem here in Toronto Canada around a year ago. I wish it didn't happen to you so I can atleast watch your vids. Thanks for what you brought though!

yep, welcome to the police state

i would like to find out what software i can get to listen to dmr or digital transmissions , that will work on my rtl sdr dongle ?

Oh and by the way,,,, as an engineer I will tell you to keep your eyes on the SDRs,,,, once you get that signal into the digital domain there is nothing you cant do to it when you bring enough processing power to bare.

A Raspberry pi would have been so much tidier than a laptop on the motorcycle. You could still do this for other signals though if you wanted to. like CB.

Actually the SC decided that if it's broadcast over RF spectrum and you can decrypt it... You can monitor it... Cable companies tried to file criminal charges against people for tuning in on their leaking signals! The court said they couldn't. So they scrabbled the channels. The court again refused to allow them to pursue criminal charges. Satellite was different. Because of its point to point nature the court have them some power to go after the scabbers...

I can't get Unitrunker to work. Everything else (DSDPlus, SRDSharp, many others) work just fine. I've been using my RTL2832U / R820T2 for a month now and have listened to many police / fire channels. I see a lot of encrypted? digital? signals there as well, but I can't get Unitrunker to work. It just says "Could not open!" and I've tried everything I can think of, installed multiple versions, settings, etc.. nothing works.

As somebody said the Police switched years ago in UK and made my scanner just about useless.

troopers did that then law said that communications have to be public so they now stream all radio communications on a web site

Yap! have too have the patients of a saint for sure, tryed to program a trunk tracker scanner with basic soft ware just doen't cut it for me. I now have a uniden Home Patrol 2, and that is a little better.:-)

I can completely understand encrypted channels. But why do ambulance and fire departments need to be encrypted? I can see tactical channels for the police, but not all of them... A few years agog I purchased a Uniden Home Patrol II for almost $600! My old trunking scanner stopped working for some reason, so I upgraded when I replaced it. The only thing trunking and all the other digital stuff has caused is the common person to not be able to listen anymore. It's now only upper middle class, the rich, and criminals who can afford to listen anymore. I live in a small town, so I doubt digital encryption will be here anytime soon. But when it does, it'll get real boring around the house...

My city just did this a few weeks ago. So long for citizens knowing what happens or possibly protecting themselves.

thats wierd where i live it is not on 850 mhz, it is on 460 mhz and there is no trunked system, its regular nbfm analog. maybe you can hear them on 460 mhz?

You can run a single SDR for trunked radio if you use SDRtrunk on windows. If you want to go through the trouble of using 2 SDRs might as well just use a raspberry pi or something

Hi great vid. How do I delete channel's that I've put in already. Thanks

So my question would be. Isn't it against the freedom of information and accountablility, and unlawful to encrypt? Their communication should be open record information.

MONITOR FIRE OPERATIONS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING ELSE TO LISTEN TO ?

To tell you the truth, being a former police officer, I am happy that scramblers are being attached. I can' tell you how many damn times we have had problems with the general public getting in the way of a call because they use those damn scanners. Back when I was on the Job, we had just plain high band radio, anyone, and it seemed everyone had one of those cheap radio shack scanners. Lost my best deer hunting area when the owner overheard me call an HP to check his tuck load when he was on the side of the highway with a busted axle. Guy probably still hates me for that one, and I could go on, but I shant. Now I have become one of those listeners, but now our State has gone statewide with trunked radio. I picked up a used Radio Shack Pro 90 TRUNKER scanner that I have yet to figure out how to program so I can pick up trunked dispatch. A couple of weeks ago we had to venture down to the Sturgis area, and the Bike Rally was going on. My little Bofeng two way lite up like a Christmas Tree with the old radio frequencies from pre trunked era, so I guess many of the old systems are still being used for stuff like that. I did not have my scanner along though, may take that along on our next trip down in that area and see what I can pick up. Where I live, you would need a lot of luck to catch one of the Deputies here on the air since there are only 3 in the County and they work mostly nights. I can get the Ambulance dispatch since they still use the analog system for that, and occasionally the Fire Department will talk on Analog when their digital radios are in the shop, which appears to be often. Now down to my question, can a fellow monitor the Ham Channels with that hardware/software combo? I got my ticket a year ago but haven't done much with it since there are no operators in my town,, the nearest is 26 miles away, which is also the nearest repeater as well. So it would be nice to be able to monitor the HF frequencies, since all I have are a few 2 meter rigs, two mobile and two hand held which I do use when we are wintering in Arizona.

Moth!? Moth!? Eeetz a trap! Night-flyer drone! :P

مرحبا يا صديقي أحتاج خبرتك كيف يمكن نجعل جهاز الراديو العادي يستقبل موجات أعلى من 108 ميغا هيرتز حتى يستقبل الموجات اللاسلكية و الطيران مع خالص تحياتي لك

Broadcastify has my local but I’d love to hear what’s being said when the say “switch to nine bravo”

With all the incidents and unrest, I can see encryption being turned on more and more as counties and state agencies have been forced by FCC to upgrade radios to digital, the encryption is probably nothing more than a check box on each radio and the System server. Maybe a couple more boxes to serve as decryption servers on the head end.

is there a free version of voice meter

How much have you tried decoding? Often only certain talkgroups are encrypted, so you might still be able to listen to some talkgroups on the system.

Why do you seem so familiar to me? Do you have another RU-vid Channel? Do you do cigar videos?

I just got unitrunker and dsd+ running on a mini pc in a Pelican case. I have a year or two to listen. Encrypted new system is to be started in 2021 and fully operational by 2023 at a cost of $765,000,000. :(

All you need to do is file a lawsuit against the agency and and it will be stopped. There is absolutely nothing illegal about decoding the encryption. The you need to remember is that you are a taxpayer and legally entitled to access to the transmission. You can not transmit but they can not refuse you the right to listen. I have done it and won and all fees were returned.

RFObsession - Would it NOT be easier to Pettition your City and or County to NOT Encrypt ????

Where did you learn these?