"10-4"

I have a police & emergency-services radio scanner at home. I love it. It's totally legal to own one, believe it or not.

My excuse for owning one is that I want to develop a "good ear" for when I'm out on the ambulance, you know, I'll learn all the codes by listening, instead of just memorizing them from a long boring list.

But truthfully, it's also just pretty awesome to listen to. I turn the radio on to see what's going on in the city before I go to sleep - robberies, fires, unlawful urination, cardiac arrests, choking kid, stolen vehicles, smoke conditions, domestic disputes - it all comes spurting out of my radio, complete with addresses, suspect descriptions, and which units are responding.

If listening to this seems a little odd, or maybe even creepy, it's not nearly as morbid as keeping the radio in your private car and driving to the scene of the crime/accident just because you want to see the drama first hand. One of my paramedics instructors said she used to do this before she got her EMT license. Now if I did something like that, I would not tell anyone about it.

At any rate, I just have my radio to learn the dispatch codes.