A weird thing just happened

Ok, I've just heard a lot of what sounded like automatic weapons fire - a couple of pops, a delay, a few more, and then a whole lot at once - and looked out the window to see a convoy of police vans at a good rate of speed heading west up on Great Western Road here in Glasgow.

And, unless it is a major incident, I'll never know what's going on.    In the States I could have tuned into the police radio and followed it, but here they have police bands private.

I guess it could be fireworks. At 9:30 in the morning on a Tuesday? Or some unfortunate industrial accident a bit farther away?  I wonder if there is a way to listen in on emergency services that I just don't know about?

Is there no local press near you that would be tweeting or updating a website/fb page with "breaking news"?

There are also pages like https://www.facebook.com/groups/2160920407511199/?source_id=227860217272561 (Not sure where specifically in Scotland you're located but I just used Edinburgh in this instance). Try looking for a page like this as they may be reporting stories like whatever is happening near you.

Is his any good?

Says a fire in a high rise.

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/fire-knightswood-high-rise-flats-16027464

Hi, yeah, I know about searching the internet, thanks.     The fire in the high-rise came up pretty quickly on my search, but it didn't solve the issue of the popping sounds, and I'm not sure why a convoy of police would have been headed to a high-rise fire that had been ongoing for several hours by then. Crowd control, perhaps?

I'm more interested in finding out how to listen in on the emergency frequencies. I guess it can't be done here, like it can be in the States?

Hi, yeah, I know about searching the internet, thanks.     The fire in the high-rise came up pretty quickly on my search, but it didn't solve the issue of the popping sounds, and I'm not sure why a convoy of police would have been headed to a high-rise fire that had been ongoing for several hours by then. Crowd control, perhaps?

I'm more interested in finding out how to listen in on the emergency frequencies. I guess it can't be done here, like it can be in the States?

I didn’t mean just “search the Internet”, I meant more find a local police/emergency “breaking news” update page of some sort (whether on FB, Twitter, or elsewhere) as we had one in Reading that would post stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it to a more obvious source or e popular on a google search.

From my experience when I tried when first moving here, no. You won’t be able to access local police radio (at least not relatively easily)


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I'm more interested in finding out how to listen in on the emergency frequencies. I guess it can't be done here, like it can be in the States?

Not any more apparently.

Yeah, our local police posts incidents on FB & twitter, especially if they impact traffic/cause road closures. They also post appeals for witnesses there & on their website, which can help with identifying odd things going on nearby that might not have made news out of respect for the victims. I'm sure your local police force has something similar!

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I didn’t mean just “search the Internet”, I meant more find a local police/emergency “breaking news” update page of some sort (whether on FB, Twitter, or elsewhere) as we had one in Reading that would post stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it to a more obvious source or e popular on a google search.

From my experience when I tried when first moving here, no. You won’t be able to access local police radio (at least not relatively easily)


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Yeah, I got that, thanks. 

Those avenues are where there are public information releases or,  there are sites like we had in SD such as BrushFirePartyLine, info posted by the public. (Which could be chaotic and unreliable.)

I'm looking for the firsthand, uncensored info that you get when you listen in directly to the communications. But as others have posted,  it's not doable anymore because it's encrypted transmission. (Bummer!) I was kind of hoping there might be a workaround there. I didn't bring any scanners or ham radio equipment over because it's pretty much illegal to import transmitters into the UK and everything was "all-in-one" transceivers. But I do miss listening to it to check the pulse of the area.

I'm looking for the firsthand, uncensored info that you get when you listen in directly to the communications. But as others have posted,  it's not doable anymore because it's encrypted transmission. (Bummer!) I was kind of hoping there might be a workaround there. I didn't bring any scanners or ham radio equipment over because it's pretty much illegal to import transmitters into the UK and everything was "all-in-one" transceivers. But I do miss listening to it to check the pulse of the area.

When I first moved here, I had a worldwide police scanner app (I tried a couple) as I used to just find it relaxing to listen to at night. I had gotten it when the Boston marathon bombing happened so I know it's definitely an app that functions and I had still managed to connect to US-based transmissions (local to my town) but when I tried to connect to UK specific ones it was always just radio silence. Tried a few different apps and web-based scanners but nothing connected (and having lived in Reading at the time, I knew it wasn't just due to being a quiet day/night). Just concluded that it wasn't possible but never really looked into it too hard. There might be a workaround, but I think it's unlikely.