La Crosse Police REACT to Dangerous New "Police Scanner App Trend"

Our crime and courts correspondent met recently with La Crosse Police Chief Ron Tischer and he spoke at length about all the important things in his purview.

One of the biggest takeaways from Tischer's musings had to do with the role of new civilian technologies in helping, or more often unfortunately hurting, the unique position of police officers and their ability to govern effectively.  In particular he expressed serious concern of these new "Police Scanner Apps" for i0S, Android, and pretty much every platform by now, because they are apparently VERY popular.

"We do EVERYTHING over those channels," Tischer lamented, "and it's not like we're real discreet about  how we go about it, we don't have secret codes or jargain or anything like that, beyond basic radio protocol like 10-4. When an officer is observing activity or a call comes in, they communicate the information concisely and clearly, but also fairly explicitly. An average correspondence might be something like: "Black male, red Buick sedan, just completed a drug deal on 7th and Market."


"This would be followed by a reading of the license plate and then letting us know how he is proceding, whether the officer is going to engage the suspect or not, or coordinating with another officer in the area he's heading towards.  When suspects hear their description over the scanner or someone tips them off, it makes it too easy for these perps to get away!  It only takes a second for someone to send a text to a friend warning them that we're on to them."

Scanner apps like this allow users
to listen to police communications

These scanners are just the latest in a slew of apps that have come out recently that have made headaches for teh boyz in blue.

The Atlantic.com "The Apps that Let You Spy on the Cops"

The "Waze" app allows users to use GPS to track police, and see the location of police vehicles marked by other users, this has been specifically disastrous to speed traps which users now can be alerted of.  But the apps that have been keeping coppers up at night the most is undeniably things like CopRecorder, that allow you to record police interactions FROM YOUR POCKET, using voice commands so secretively that unsuspecting officers are none the wiser.

It's the proliferation of recording devices in our daily lives that have shined a bright light on the ugly reality of policing.  Just this week another police murder of an unarmed civilian was caught on video.  The officer fired 5 shots into the back of an African American man in South Carolina.  This cold blooded murder was followed by the cop planting a tazer on the victim with the plan to get away with the murder by claiming self defense. Thanks to this heroic citizen-journalist's quick acting with his cell phone camera, this officer will be spending the rest of his life getting passed around a prison cell like a peace pipe.
~Juicy