Are police scanners legal and how do they work? Here’s what you need to know:

Seeing the red lights flashing behind you while driving on the highway can instantly break your heart. Therefore, it is not surprising that many drivers use police scanners to identify nearby police officers and avoid trouble. Before you get your own game-changing police scanner for your next road trip, you might be wondering whether it’s even legal to use one. The short answer is: As with a radar detector, in some states it’s probably best not to use a police scanner while driving.

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Owning and operating police scanners is actually legal in the United States because the radio frequencies used by law enforcement, like all U.S. radio frequencies, are owned by the public. However, most states have restrictions on the use of police scanners.

In Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, New York and Minnesota, using a police scanner while driving is illegal. In other states such as California (where many things related to cars are illegal), Michigan, New Jersey, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia, you will face additional charges if you use the police Scanner to assist in a crime. Always check your state’s police scanner laws before installing a scanner in your car.

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People in many cities across the U.S. have noticed that police scanners have gone silent. This is because police authorities have encrypted their transmissions and no longer allowed drivers, journalists and other members of the public to hear police calls. This has resulted in police scanners being unusable in some cities.

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The FBI has pushed police departments to silence radio conversations to give Americans more privacy. And the police responded. In early 2024, for example, authorities across Kansas began encrypting radio communications, saying this was to protect residents’ information and ensure that criminals did not monitor the radio to evade responding officers.

The New York City Police Department has also started encrypting its broadcasts, claiming that criminals were listening in. In Colorado, more than 30 agencies have also decided to encrypt radio broadcasts – and the Radio Television Digital News Association argued that doing so would endanger the public by concealing both crime and potentially troubling police behavior. And the Las Vegas police have followed this trend, although they allow journalists to listen in.

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As more police departments encrypt their radio communications, the idea of ​​installing a police scanner (which can cost anywhere from $50 to $700) is no longer as appealing to some. Instead, try installing a police scanner app on your phone to see if there are any public police stations nearby.