Scanning the News

Ever since my grandparents bought me a police scanner last summer, constant squawking has filled the background of my daily life. The little black box on my bureau calls out street addresses, suspect descriptions, and the other minutiae of law enforcement’s lexicon. From speeding tickets to serious crime, the dispatches require a trained ear to filter out the real drama from the regular drivel.

But I’m not interested in a trained ear—I want to hear it all. Some journalists look at a police scanner as a tool of the trade, but my obsession goes much deeper. The scanner is a complement to my personality. I am an inquisitive guy and a consummate rubbernecker. This beautiful black radio lets me in on everything going on around me, even if I can’t make it to the scene. I keep it blaring in my dorm room all the time, covering up silence with white noise.

At Harvard, when I hear a report of an attempted bike theft, I type in the address on mapquest.com to get a mental picture. One night last fall, I listened for hours as police responded to five separate cases of unconscious students puking their guts out from alcohol poisoning. A week before that, I heard about an assault at 1 a.m. and went out in the Square to check it out.

But you don’t just hear the facts—nothing but the facts, ma’am. That Joe Friday approach is the fare of police logs and bad cops reporting. These raw radio transmissions give out the texture of law enforcement’s culture. You hear the way police, fire and medical responders think. Even better, you get a sense of the humor and frustration that goes with their jobs.

On the way to treat yet another barf-crusted freshman, one officer chirped: “The intoxication squad is on its way.” The dispatcher responded: “Don’t forget your rubber boots.” Police complain to their buddies about the bullets, beats, and boredom they face on the job and this bubbles over onto the radio. They become more human than Dirty Harry, if not as funny as Beverly Hills Cop.

Emergency responders, however, make up only part of this constellation of radio stars. My scanner tracks the chatter of taxi transmissions after a Red Sox game and the gastronomic gurgle at McDonald’s restaurants. Even the school bus fleet makes for a fine show. On the first day of school, I listened to dozens of little kids board the wrong buses and forget how to get home. Each time, the dispatchers directed the drivers to return the kids to the schools even if that delayed the next pickup by an hour. Here was a group of people genuinely determined to leave no child behind.

I’ve come to look at everyone differently, thanks to the scanner. The bus drivers, firemen, and police officers I spot during my daily routine transform into the radio personalities on my favorite show. The more I listen, the more I learn about their characters, which is what I love about reporting. I get access to an endless stream of raw information that I can turn into a story. Neither job nor hobby, scanning is my addiction. Whenever I’m out and about I feel the painful sting of withdrawal from my scanner. At the first sound of a siren my ears perk up and my heart quickens. By the second wail I’m off and running toward my room.

Jonathan P. Abel ’05 is a history concentrator in Quincy House. He was executive editor of The Crimson in 2004.