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But we scanner listeners are a dying breed. Peel and York Regional Police forces switched over to digital radios and encrypted their signals in 2014, meaning that for media, hobbyists, and post-crash cleaner crews, the scanners have gone silent. Both police forces cited officer safety and citizen privacy as reasons to block everyone else from listening in; York Regional Police's chief later admitted that several news programs broadcasting the final words of an officer fatally struck by a car, heard over the scanners, also contributed to York's decision. It's the latest in a growing wave of silence creeping on to the scanners—Hamilton police started encrypting in 2012; as Durham's did in 2000. Toronto police had said they would make the switch in May, but earlier this month, their frequencies went silent too.
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You have to get used to emergency service lingo when you start listening to scanners. Male, very HBD? A guy who's shitfaced (has been drinking). The police are transporting a body? Don't get too excited, because "body" in cop-speak means a prisoner. Paramedics are transporting a patient from the scene, CTAS1? Well, better get on that because the poor bastard is treading the fine line between life and death. CTAS3? They're mostly fine. And VSA? If it's a crime-related call, that's definitely making the blotter the next day because that means the patient's heart and lungs have stopped (vital signs absent, but remember, no one's officially dead until they've been pronounced—patients can be VSA and be brought back). It wouldn't be fair to let the letters have all the fun though: 10-2s is the verbal shortcut to mean police (as in, "10-2s are on scene"), and yes, they really do say 10-4 at the end of some transmissions.
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Did you know that in Toronto, there were four times more suicides than murders in 2009? The fact that suicides far outweigh murders as a cause of death isn't exactly a secret, but it's one thing to read a statistic and another to hear the sheer number of suicide attempt calls that police have to respond to every day. Editors and mental health experts have long cited fears of triggering copycat suicides to justify not reporting on them.Another thing everyone's probably unconsciously aware of but doesn't really notice is the loose correlation between weather and crime. In general, a drop in temperatures usually equates to a drop in crime—when winter really hit Toronto and the city fell to below freezing, the radios went largely silent. The exact opposite holds true when it starts warming up."The hot days, you could guarantee the scanner was going to be busy," said Richard, a hobbyist who did not want his last name published and who started listening in on Toronto police transmissions in 1988. It's not just anecdotal—a 2013 study found that with temperature spikes come crime rate spikes too. "After midnight after the bars let out on a Friday or Saturday night, fights were and are still common," he added.
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The growing encryption trend has drawn the ire of journalists and hobbyists, who argue that not only do silent scanners make it harder to find breaking news, but also give police more power on what's reported—unless someone's lucky enough to stumble upon an active crime scene, the media who report on crimes are almost completely dependent on police telling them.
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