Help me find breaking news in real time for my neighborhood?
August 7, 2013 8:13 AM Subscribe
I live near Ohio State University campus, and There are often helicopters flying overhead, and police cruisers on the ground, searching up and down the streets for a specific suspect that just committed a crime. In this type of situation, how can I get up to date breaking news to find out what's going on? I try the local news breaking news channels websites which aren't much help, and I have tried police radio app, which is mostly unrelated police chatter from the whole city. Any ideas?
@osuscannerfeed appears to just be one guy tweeting what he hears, but might be useful (except he's out of town for the next month).
Have you tried contacting the OSU police? You may be able to be added to an email list for this sort of thing -- the University of Michigan has a system that sent me alerts whenever there was an active BOLO in the area.
posted by Etrigan at 8:24 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Have you tried contacting the OSU police? You may be able to be added to an email list for this sort of thing -- the University of Michigan has a system that sent me alerts whenever there was an active BOLO in the area.
posted by Etrigan at 8:24 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Seconding Twitter.
City of Columbus/Franklin County OH and many other cities have, one way or another, the police scanners online. Here's a site with audio as well as a delayed feed of emergency incidents for Franklin Cty.
There's a Columbus OH subreddit which is probably a good place to ask questions like that.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:25 AM on August 7, 2013
City of Columbus/Franklin County OH and many other cities have, one way or another, the police scanners online. Here's a site with audio as well as a delayed feed of emergency incidents for Franklin Cty.
There's a Columbus OH subreddit which is probably a good place to ask questions like that.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:25 AM on August 7, 2013
twitterfall.com is great for this, but you'll need a twitter login. you enter a search term like "ohio state" and it will continually live update the results as they come in. it's fantastic for breaking events and the initial, raw reactions from people near them.
posted by averageamateur at 8:26 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by averageamateur at 8:26 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Thirding Twitter. I don't even use it but one time we lost power on campus and everyone took to Twitter on their smartphones. We found out that a tractor trailer had smashed into a telephone pole hours before the school sent an official alert.
posted by chainsofreedom at 8:34 AM on August 7, 2013
posted by chainsofreedom at 8:34 AM on August 7, 2013
Nthing Twitter-- I've been in Princeton for a couple of hurricanes and large storms now and it's been the only way of getting information given the lack of power. If you have a local patch.com site, they often link to useful official twitters, though your student body probably has a couple of power users too.
posted by jetlagaddict at 8:36 AM on August 7, 2013
posted by jetlagaddict at 8:36 AM on August 7, 2013
Our area has a great up to the minute facebook for this, maybe your's does as well.
posted by maxg94 at 8:52 AM on August 7, 2013
posted by maxg94 at 8:52 AM on August 7, 2013
You need a digital trunking scanner. You should be able to find one for less than $300 used.
Once you get one, go to the OSUPD page on Radio Reference and download onto your scanner all the frequencies (programming a trunking scanner is not like programming an old analog UHF/VHF scanner).
Twitter, live streams and apps serve a useful purpose but nothing compares to monitoring the frequencies yourself.
posted by mlis at 9:21 AM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
Once you get one, go to the OSUPD page on Radio Reference and download onto your scanner all the frequencies (programming a trunking scanner is not like programming an old analog UHF/VHF scanner).
Twitter, live streams and apps serve a useful purpose but nothing compares to monitoring the frequencies yourself.
posted by mlis at 9:21 AM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
Should have added, you will be able to isolate the few channels used by OSUPD and agencies backing them up during a crime-in-progress, and lockout any other police frequencies.
posted by mlis at 9:27 AM on August 7, 2013
posted by mlis at 9:27 AM on August 7, 2013
Best answer: If you are in the Old North Columbus/Washington Beach/University District/SoHud area, memail me if you want to be added to the neighborhood watch facebook group.
But if it's seemed especially bad in the last couple of weeks, I can probably put your mind at ease crime-wise -- it was because there was a @#$)(*&Q@#R$)*& helicopter joyride coming from the Ohio State Fair. I work at OSU and live in the neighborhood so some days I was hearing that awful thing every 20 minutes for 12 hours a day. The Short North complained and they got the route moved up our way. I thought I was going to go insane.
Also, you can get on campus crime alerts (for in progress situations) by signing up here: http://buckeyealert.osu.edu/ . That's very low traffic.
OSU cops are pretty much on campus only, so their scanners are less likely to have what you want than finding the proper district for CPD. I've used the Scanner+ free app for iOS to get info before. The trick is to find the right district -- and Columbus police districts were redrawn in the past few years, so sometimes stuff is still off a bit.
https://www.crimereports.com/ is good after the fact.
posted by pixiecrinkle at 9:49 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
But if it's seemed especially bad in the last couple of weeks, I can probably put your mind at ease crime-wise -- it was because there was a @#$)(*&Q@#R$)*& helicopter joyride coming from the Ohio State Fair. I work at OSU and live in the neighborhood so some days I was hearing that awful thing every 20 minutes for 12 hours a day. The Short North complained and they got the route moved up our way. I thought I was going to go insane.
Also, you can get on campus crime alerts (for in progress situations) by signing up here: http://buckeyealert.osu.edu/ . That's very low traffic.
OSU cops are pretty much on campus only, so their scanners are less likely to have what you want than finding the proper district for CPD. I've used the Scanner+ free app for iOS to get info before. The trick is to find the right district -- and Columbus police districts were redrawn in the past few years, so sometimes stuff is still off a bit.
https://www.crimereports.com/ is good after the fact.
posted by pixiecrinkle at 9:49 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
My county in NY has a website showing information about 911 calls. (Lots of car accidents and barking dog complaints.)
posted by vitabellosi at 10:31 AM on August 7, 2013
posted by vitabellosi at 10:31 AM on August 7, 2013
« Older First day back on Lofepramine, not feeling great... | How to channel audio from Roku 3 through old... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
My town's Police dept. has a feed that, as does the Fire Dept. There are even individual cops who have feeds and update on local events. There's a guy who monitors a scanner for the entire area who posts about what's going on but I had to stop following him because there was too much bad news.
Twitter is really the best real-time news app.
posted by bondcliff at 8:17 AM on August 7, 2013 [3 favorites]