Scanner Radio
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Minneapolis sits at the center of Hennepin County, home to roughly 425,000 people in the city and more than 1.2 million across the county. It is Minnesota's largest city, a Mississippi River town of distinct neighborhoods, lakes, and a downtown that fills for Vikings, Twins, and Timberwolves games. Over the past several years it has also been the backdrop for some of the most closely followed emergency radio traffic in the country, from the unrest that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 to the federal immigration enforcement that has gripped East Lake Street more recently.
In May 2020, after Floyd was killed in police custody, dispatch channels in Minneapolis were monitored by people around the world in real time. Listeners followed the radio as protests spread from the Cup Foods corner to the department's Third Precinct on Minnehaha Avenue, which officers abandoned and which was set on fire on the night of May 28. The state activated the Minnesota National Guard in what became its largest deployment since World War II. For days, the scanner was the rawest, most immediate window into a story the rest of the world was watching on a delay.
The same neighborhoods returned to national attention in 2025 and 2026. In early June 2025, a large federal law enforcement operation on East Lake Street drew a fast-moving crowd after word spread on social media and group texts that immigration agents were raiding a Mexican restaurant. Officials said the operation was part of a broader criminal investigation and not an immigration raid, though the incident sparked widespread confusion and protests.
Months later the immigration enforcement was real and sustained. In December 2025 the Department of Homeland Security announced "Operation Metro Surge" in the Twin Cities, and in January 2026 it expanded the effort with thousands of additional agents. Large crowds marched down East Lake Street in response. Through all of it, people across the metro reached for whatever live signal they could find to understand what was unfolding block by block.
The easiest way to get started is with the Scanner Radio app. Open it, search "Minneapolis" or "Hennepin." You will see the fire, EMS, and regional feeds that are currently available in and around the city, and you can tap any one to start streaming. To cover the rest of the metro, search "St. Paul" or "Ramsey County" for feeds across the river. No hardware, antenna, or setup required. Just an app and a few seconds to tap into a feed.
Two features are worth turning on before you settle in. Community-tagged event reports let listeners flag the incident type active on a feed, such as a building fire or a large gathering, so you can see what is happening at a glance. Listener spike alerts push a notification when a feed sees a sudden surge in activity, often the earliest sign that something major is underway, which is exactly how many people first realized something was happening on Lake Street.
The most active traffic in the metro runs on the fire and EMS channels. Hennepin County fire and EMS dispatch, along with many suburban fire departments and regional mutual-aid channels, carry exactly the kind of calls that tell you when something significant is underway: a structure fire, a mass-casualty response, or a sudden surge of units toward one address. Alongside them you will find a range of nearby public-safety agencies and regional channels across the Minneapolis area, including St. Paul and Ramsey County feeds just across the river in the other half of the Twin Cities. When a major incident occurs, scanner traffic is often one of the earliest public indicators that something significant is happening.
It is the same reason people across the metro kept a feed open during the moments described above. A live channel is the closest thing to standing at the dispatcher's shoulder, hearing where the trucks are headed and how a response is building in real time, minutes before any of it reaches a news alert.
Yes. Listening to publicly broadcast scanner traffic is legal in Minnesota and across the United States. Restrictions only apply to using a scanner while committing a crime.
Fire and EMS dispatch across Hennepin County and many surrounding suburbs, along with regional and mutual-aid channels and a range of nearby public-safety agencies. You can also pull up St. Paul and Ramsey County feeds for the east side of the Twin Cities. Search "Minneapolis," "Hennepin," "St. Paul," or "Ramsey County" in Scanner Radio to see what is available near you.
No. With the Scanner Radio app you can stream the live Minneapolis-area fire, EMS, and regional feeds straight from your phone. There is no hardware, antenna, or setup required.