Start playing Police/Fire/EMS dispatch during the protests

In any conflict information is key. If you watch the news on television you are not getting the whole story. Radio dispatch will give you a lens to what is happening at this exact moment. More people need to be listening to police radio.

As an example, I heard the national guard movements being coordinated as they were showing up near the 3rd precinct 10 minutes before they arrived. This type of information is useful.

Here is how to listen to dispatch

I’ve been listening to police, fire, medical dispatch frequencies to understand things happening around me. It is helpful for situational awareness, and I record streams in case they disappear from the public record.

For example, I heard officers in Minneapolis being ordered to “keep their body cameras on until they were told to turn them off” while in the process of taking arrested protestors to detention.

I think [hope] the commanding officer had the right intentions, but here is the thing — police officers are ostensibly trained in these protocols and the need for a commanding officer to inform his subordinates to keep their body cameras on until instructed to turn them off *while in a crisis situation* is pretty clear evidence that the police institution in our country is broken.

Too much footage has “gone missing” in situations like this all over the country. For many years.

Listening to and helping others monitor police, fire and other public radio channels will improve your situational awareness. This is key to engaging in civil disobedience safely and effectively.

If you have a car:

• roll down your windows,
• turn up your stereo
• start playing any and all available dispatch channels for the area you are in

If you don’t have a car:

• Listen on your phone!

Finding the best streams for your location can take some trial and error, try this:

• google search for “police scanner stream <city name>”
• For example, the google search for Minneapolis would take you here

• Most of the results you’ll find are on broadcastify — check out multiple links to see whats available (some areas have multiple pages with wildly different stream links) [link]

• Find the streams that sound relevant, and make sure that the listener count is not zero. When the listener count is zero most of the time it means the stream is offline, and it will say so when you click through.
• Click the stream. Here I would recommend the Saint Paul Police, Fire and Public Works Dispatch as well as the county public safety dispatches near you with high listener count.
• Hit play, and sometimes you will be forced to listen to a fifteen second ad.
• Congratulations! You now have more situational awareness than most reporters on live TV :)
• On a computer you can listen to multiple streams at the same time. I recommend no more than four at once, but with a few hours practice of just carefully listening you will be able to understand multiple communications as they happen live with little effort.

Extra Credit:

• If you have a sound recorder on your computer/phone record whatever streams you hear. If bad things happen maybe you’ll be able to help provide evidence from overheard radio chatter.

Other ways to help support your local protests:

• Follow your local BLM chapter on all social media platforms for tips on how to stay safe during the protests, including technology safety practices, police interaction practices, covid resources and how to donate to justice bonds to free arrested protestors.

• Wear masks [covid / privacy]
• When posting photos try to de-identify people in them. Wonderful human made this tool to help [click the link] ImageScrubber
• As always, remember that we are all human animals.
• Comments are appreciated, please share.

General Protest Safety

1. Water makes pepper spray worse. Use milk or liquid antacid and water. Don’t wear contacts.

2. If you get tear gassed, when you get home, put the contaminated clothes in a plastic bag for later decontamination and shower with cold water to avoid opening your pores.

3. Come with friends and don’t get separated.

Avoid leaving the crowd and watch out for police snatch squads.

4. Beware undercovers, but beware snitch jacketing and collaborator ‘peace police’ even more.

5. The far right is very good at combing through pictures and doxxing people. Mask up. Also its covid and with mace and pepper spray bring extra..once its hit with those itll suffocate you and be rendered useless.

6. Write any necessary phone numbers you may need directly on your skin in sharpie.

7. Have an offsite plan for emergencies if you have not been heard from by X time coordinated with someone offsite.

8. Make sure all mobile devices are charged!!

9. If you plan on going to jail, plan it: bail, lawyer, time off from work, witnesses i.e.: a cadre. Don’t just go to jail without training.

10. Beware folks inciting violence. Most of them are police feds. Watch out for hook ups for the same reason. Get to know the crowd. They may set you up

11. Deactivate “touch id” on your iPhone — they cannot legally force you to open your locked phone via your passcode.