Carl Landrover
Bluelighter
This.
Most cities use trunking systems (look it up) and then encryption on top of that. I have a Radioshack Pro-96 scanner which can follow the trunking systems but nothing can hear the encrypted channels/talkgroups.
Yes there are police scanner apps for your phone but I've used them and compared them to an actual scanner and theres a good 60-90 second delay and you can't choose which channels/talkgroups to listen to whereas with a real scanner you can.
There's a big difference between a radar detector and a police scanner.
Do you ever hear anything interesting?
Even aside from police broadcasts