Safety tips from the Scanner

I grew up listening to a police scanner so imagine how great it was to find that a scanner App is available for our modern day devices!!  Even better, one can choose to eavesdrop on just about any safety force of choice from all over the country! Now I don’t really care about the dastardly doings in downtown Dallas, but a local (not MY town local, but close enough) dispatch provides more than enough entertainment. After several months of almost daily listening, I can recognize voices, know the codes and have learned to tell military time. I love our safety services men and women, but they can be pretty funny at times.

What follows are some things I have learned and in this modern day and age of having to be careful of our surroundings and proactive in our personal safety, I am passing along the following tips to do my part in educating the public.

If robbing a $ store or other such venue, don’t dress in outlandish clothing or better yet, don’t cross dress and wear heels. It becomes very easy to give a description of what you are wearing and even an overindulging doughnut

downer with a badge can catch you in those heels. The subsequent fashion tips come free with apprehension.

If you do manage to outrun the coppers, do not return to your own home, where they already know your name and address and have it programmed on speed dial in the cruiser’s GPS. As a matter of fact, they probably bring gifts to the kids for their birthdays because they visit so often.

If there is snow on the ground, and you are on foot….no need for the dog, finding you will be easy. If you don’t know why….you deserve to be caught.

When robbed by three (yes, 3) prostitutes, be sure to take your pants with you. Otherwise some cop has to write a report about why he found some pants and then another cop has to write a report about a guy who was robbed by three prostitutes and is running around town without his pants. Since they are on different channels sometimes, the pants guy did not know about the pant-less guy….. no mention however about how or why the victim was with 3 prostitutes.

Do not drive a really distinct car if you plan to use it for a getaway vehicle. They don’t even have to drive around and look for you…..if you have to ask why, you deserve to be caught…(see the GPS reason above)

Being declared a “non-breather” is not a good thing. It is evidently not the same as a DOA but they both do not seem to muster up much urgency.

If you call 911 to report a crime, try to do so in a timely manner, like close to when it occurred. Waiting a few hours or a day or so until you could find a phone seems like a lame excuse. Perhaps that relates to the non-breather thing.

If you plan to return your breast pump to “one of those places” which are not identified, you might want to include a note. If not, then they have to call in the bomb dog and put on big suits and shut down the surrounding area until the object can be identified. The finer points of how the “bomb” looks a lot like a breast pump are discussed (by male officers) until the female officer decides to end this fiasco and declares said “bomb” to yes, be a breast pump. Call off the dog….it will not go boom boom because it goes on the …….and as far as we know, terrorists are not lactose intolerant.

I am sure I could recall even more of the amusing situations overheard on the scanner App, but I need to get off this computer and back to my NSA practice.  God bless our men and women in uniform of all branches of security and safety, both civilian and military. Be safe this season and I thank you for being there for all of us! Merry Christmas!!