Can you pick up police on a realistic pro-70 hand-held scanner?

Answer 1

It depends on your location and the policies of the police department or departments in your area as different police departments around the country use different types of communications equipment.

Some cities digitally encrypt their communications so that only the intended personnel are able to listen in and communicate such as the Orange County California police.

Police departments that use APCO 25 codes require a scanner with technology that can decode APCO 25 codes. Considering the age of the pro-70 I would not think that the pro-70 police scanner is capable of doing this. I also was not able to find any reference to APCO in the owner's manual.

If the frequencies you wish to monitor are below 512Mhz and use a conventional system to communicate it should work. If the frequencies in use are truncated or use APCO 25 codes or are encrypted then no.

Also there may be different frequencies and systems being used for various police agencies in your area that you wish to listen to such as Highway Patrol or Local Police or Local Sheriff's or State Police or park rangers and the list continues.

If you have a local Radio Shack around locally they may be able to provide information specific to your area to see if a pro-70 scanner will work for picking up local police traffic.

Listed below is a link for the pro-70 owner's manual.