Radio Reference is a popular website for (police) scanner enthusiasts. It offers a pretty revolutionary concept: enthusiasts hook their scanners up to computers which relay the traffic to RadioReference’s servers, which host them as Shoutcast feeds. (I would also argue that the site is the best resource out there for scanner frequencies, and there are also forums that comprise what I can only assume is the world’s largest scanner-related community.)

For some inexplicable reason, I ignored the Live Feeds for a long time, until I got an iPhone and discovered an abundance of “police scanner” apps that were built on top of those feeds. The feeds are quite popular — the site’s owner posted a blog entry showing his latest AWS bill, which shows about 14TB of incoming traffic and more than 35TB outgoing traffic.

Besides being really valuable for those who simply don’t own a scanner, some of the feeds provide audio that is out of reach for most people. I could easily listen to the LAPD, for example, despite living thousands of miles away. There’s now a feed for Mass State Police in the area; I own a scanner capable of receiving them, but their signal is very weak where I live, so it’s advantageous to listen over the Internet, despite a bit of lag. Waltham has a feed of its own (well, plus Newton Fire). Someone else provides a Merrimack Police feed, which is advantageous because it’s a digital voice (P25) signal and a capable scanner will run you $500.

Boston Police are conspicuously absent, even though a lot of smaller cities have feeds. It seems that there’s considerable interest in setting one up, but to date, no one has. (I’d love to myself, but I have very poor reception here — part of the reason I want a BPD feed in the first place!)

In any event, I’d recommend checking the feeds out. You can listen in with a browser, or use one of many smartphone apps.