Do you monitor the Grand Junction Police Department and Fire Department, Mesa County Sheriff's Office, and Mesa County Search and Rescue from a "police scanner app"? Here's a little bit of information regarding a myth people have about these apps.

Given the recent power outages in the Grand Junction area, you may have difficulty accessing the feed on these streams. There's a good reason why.

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The Good Ol' Days

Living in the Jordan household in the 70s and 80s, my mother was never without her police scanner. The older units were about the size of a shoe box, typically featuring six or eight channels.

You would buy these things at Radio Shack. The most common brands I remember were Bearcat and Electra. As years went by, other brands kept popping up. Miniaturization was the fad, with each year's models getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, tiny hand-held units became the norm.

What People Did With Them

Personally, I always objected to these things. People, my mother being one, would listen to these 24 hours a day. The airwaves were cluttered with one bit of bad news followed by another. To my ears, the content was always depressing.

Welcome to the Future

Nowadays, people listen to the various agencies activity via "scanner apps." One such app where you can monitor Grand Junction police, EMS, and fire department activity would be Broadcastify.

What's the Issue?

I'm logged on to Broadcastify right now (9:26 a.m. on Thursday, June 3, 2021) and it's not working. There's no feed. Does this mean the Grand Junction Police Department Regional 911 is not broadcasting? Not at all. They are broadcasting per norm. Right here, right now, the third party app isn't working.

Here's the Myth

According to a recent Facebook post from Grand Junction Regional 911, the scanner apps people monitor do not function the way many of us think they do. It appears many believe dispatch centers control the radio traffic you hear over their scanner apps.

This is the Reality

According to Grand Junction Regional 911's Facebook post, local agencies simply do what they do. They have been, and are presently, dispatching per normal. When you listen to a feed from a scanner app, you're listening to a third party using a radio scanner. The third party catches local broadcasts and then feeds it over the internet to an application service. From there, you pick up the audio on your scanner app.

If you're listening to a scanner app feeding content out of Grand Junction, don't be alarmed. The apps aren't working, probably due to the recent power outages. Local agencies are going about their regular business.

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