Chicago Live Police Scanner

Chicago Live Police Scanner carries Chicago Police Department and Chicago Fire Department activity along with Cook County court outcomes. Chicago is one of the largest coverage areas in the network by population.

Chicago Police work out of districts across the city, and Cook County wraps around it with its own sheriff's office and a court system that handles one of the largest criminal caseloads in the country. Coverage is organized by neighborhood and district, because 'Chicago' on its own tells a reader almost nothing about whether something affects them.

Traffic coverage follows the expressway system — the Dan Ryan, the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Stevenson and the Edens — where a single incident can hold up traffic for hours. Lake Shore Drive and the major arterials get covered when closures affect getting around.

Chicago Fire Department runs one of the busiest fire and EMS operations in the United States, and working fires, extra alarms and major rescues are a regular part of what gets published here. Cook County court records let us follow charged cases through to outcome.

Coverage is published on Facebook, where the page posts throughout the day as incidents develop. Every post is checked against an official source before it goes up — an agency release, a court record, or confirmed reporting from a named outlet. When a detail cannot be verified, it does not run.