Phoenix News Scanner Center
How Phoenix News monitors Valley public-safety radio — and how a scanner call becomes a privacy-protected, preliminary incident on the map.
Scanner traffic is preliminary and unverified by nature and is never presented as confirmed information. Public incident locations are approximate and privacy protected — block level or nearby intersection only. Phoenix News does not monitor, decode or rebroadcast encrypted or otherwise restricted radio communications, and does not restream scanner audio to listeners.
System Status
- Monitoring
- Local Uniden SDS150 — newsroom
- Review mode
- Automated privacy + quality checks; anything uncertain is held for review
- Last published incident
- Checking…
No qualifying report has cleared the automated checks recently. Scanner data may be delayed.
How a scanner call becomes an incident
- Step 1
Uniden SDS150 scanner
A local Uniden SDS150 desktop scanner monitors lawfully receivable Valley public-safety channels in the newsroom. Encrypted systems are never decoded.
- Step 2
ATR2x-USB audio input
Scanner audio is captured through an ATR2x-USB interface on newsroom hardware. Nothing is streamed, proxied or redistributed to listeners.
- Step 3
Local Whisper transcription
Audio is transcribed on the local machine with Whisper. Transcripts stay in the newsroom pipeline — raw audio is not published.
- Step 4
Crime Radar V9
Crime Radar V9 parses transcripts into structured candidate reports with a call type, approximate area and a confidence score.
- Step 5
Privacy sanitizing
Before a report reaches the review queue, exact residential addresses, unit numbers, medical, domestic-violence and juvenile locations are stripped and reduced to block level.
- Step 6
Automated checks, human backstop
Qualifying reports publish automatically once they pass every privacy and quality check. Uncertain, sensitive or low-confidence reports stay unpublished for a Phoenix News journalist to review.
Live Incident Map
Reviewed scanner and dispatch reports appear on the live incident map with clear verification labeling and approximate locations.
Open the incident mapEnhanced scanner resources
Phoenix News+ members get enhanced scanner resources, expanded incident history and subscriber-only live coverage for $4.99 a month.
Join Phoenix News+