Listen to the Sounds of Tasing on Your iPhone

By Ethan Lee on October 20, 2009

Mobile application developer, Juicy Development, is now streaming live police, fire and emergency service streams over the iPhone through their application, Police Scanner.

The Utah-based firm has recently partnered with a large online provider of emergency broadcasts, RadioReference.com, to broaden their selection of local emergency streams.

While it’s cool (at least for geeks) to be able to listen to your local police over your iPhone, the novelty would quickly wear off. However, there’s more than the novelty at play.

Seven years ago, the Washington D.C. area was terrorized by a duo that became known as the Beltway Snipers. The attacks left ten people dead and three others critically injured.

At the time, residents of Maryland, D.C. and Virginia craved information about the attacks quicker than the media could keep up. Those who could afford expensive police scanners and manage to figure out how to use them, took advantage of the emergency broadcasts which were eye-opening.

Police in the D.C. region were wildly disorganized and pursuing leads that had no credibility. The police pandemonium became evident only while listening to the scanners as formal press conferences or statements to the press by law enforcement authorities were designed only to give the public the perception that the situation was under control.

The perfect example of this was the shooting of Iran Brown a 13-year-old boy shot near his school in Bowie Maryland. The shooting occurred just days after Maryland’s Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose boldly exclaimed, “Your children are safe.”

You’ll never know when a local or national crisis will emerge and it’s best to have a means to monitor what is going on and filter information for yourself rather than have the media (or public officials) do it for you. For the price of an iPhone app, you can’t go wrong.

However, be sure to check the availability of streams in your area before dropping a dime on this app.