summitcountyscanners arose from a desire to stream Police/Fire/EMT scanner channels that were no longer available on the main scanner apps. This is a work in progress. Years ago, someone close to me complained that the scanner streams for our town were no longer available. Whenever this was asked about by anyone in our town’s Facebook gossip groups, or on Nextdoor, the topic was answered with the explanation that the person providing the stream fell ill and didn’t want to spend time on it, and then 20 minutes later, the topic would be deleted. Every. Single. Time. Multiple gossip groups with different admins and different platforms (i.e. Facebook and Nextdoor) and these topics were being deleted consistently after 20 minutes. Eventually the lag time decreased to the point that the topic would be up for less than a minute before being deleted.

I sleuthed and found the URL for the missing stream, and it was a audio clip on repeat about someone spraying a graffiti -ahem-… body part, on the street.

My only guess is that it was a city governmental body (or multiple) that had some interest in this stream not being restored. I don’t like that. Part of the social contract between the police (et al) and the citizenry is that the radio traffic is to be broadcasted in the clear so that the citizenry can monitor this.

I set out to provide a feed to Broadcastify/RadioReference, since that’s where all the scanner apps got their feeds from. I was ignored. I even offered to provide the stream for free. Ignored. I paid them. Ignored. Hence this website. You can connect here and listen, and we’re also (sometimes) listed in directories such as Xiph or SHOUTcast.

Eventually I added a five minute delay to the streams. Then I noticed a lot of traffic from a neighboring major city PD and City Hall, as well as my hometown’s PD and City Hall. Then the neighboring city changed their official stream’s delay from fifteen minutes to five. Then my hometown added an official stream with a five minute delay. I removed all delays from my streams. A year or two later, and the major neighboring city encrypted their radio system. This prevents the citizenry from listening, thus breaking the social contract.

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