Berkeley PD Fatal Officer Involved Shooting — September 21, 2023
Details are in this YouTube video.
🎓 Farewell, Berkeley! 🌟
As of December 15, 2023, my Berkeley journey has come to an end. After graduating from UC Berkeley, I’ve moved back to Los Angeles. Thank you for the support—Berkeley will always have a special place in my heart.
Want to keep up with my work? Follow my LA account, @ScannerPacific on X (Twitter).
📚 Explore the Berkeley Collection
Records, photos, transcripts, videos, and more from the archive.
📰 Raw OIS Footage
Berkeley PD Fatal Officer Involved Shooting — November 6, 2023
Details are in this YouTube video.
Oakland PD OIS — Armed Carjacking Suspect — February 17, 2023
Details are in this YouTube video.
Hayward PD Fatal Officer Involved Shooting — September 6, 2023
Details are in this YouTube video.
🔧 System Technical Insights
The @ScanBerkeley radio + transcription stack combined four open-source tools with lightweight hardware.
- Trunk-Recorder: Recorded each individual transmission on Berkeley talkgroups.
- Rdio-Scanner: Played transmissions live and let listeners customize channels.
- Trunk-Transcribe: Pushed recorded audio through OpenAI Whisper, producing text.
- crimeisdown-v3 (heavily modified): Displayed transcriptions on a site with historical review.
Each transmission was saved as its own file—so listeners could click exactly what they wanted to hear.
Hardware Components
- SDRs: Three Nooelec RTL-SDR v5 bundles (link) for RF capture.
- Raspberry Pi 4: Ran Trunk-Recorder and Rdio-Scanner (link).
A stronger desktop is recommended for very heavy voice activity. The stack ran behind an NGINX proxy for API + site hosting.
Hosted Frequencies
| DEC | HEX | Mode | Alpha Tag | Description | Tag | Group | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2105 | 839 | D | Berkeley FD1 | Fire Dispatch 1 | Fire Dispatch | Berkeley | 1 |
| 2106 | 83a | D | Berkeley FD2 | Fire Dispatch 2 | Fire Dispatch | Berkeley | 1 |
| 2112 | 840 | D | Berkeley FD Emer | Fire Emergency | Emergency Ops | Berkeley | 1 |
| 2671 | a6f | D | ACFD Command 11 | Command 11 - Berkeley | Fire-Tac | Alameda County Fire | 1 |
| 2672 | a70 | D | ACFD Command 12 | Command 12 - Berkeley | Fire-Tac | Alameda County Fire | 1 |
| 2691 | a83 | D | ACFD Tac 31 | Tac 31 - Berkeley | Fire-Tac | Alameda County Fire | 1 |
| 2692 | a84 | D | ACFD Tac 32 | Tac 32 - Berkeley | Fire-Tac | Alameda County Fire | 1 |
| 2711 | a97 | D | ACFD Tac 51 | Tac 51 - Berkeley | Fire-Tac | Alameda County Fire | 1 |
| 2712 | a98 | D | ACFD Tac 52 | Tac 52 - Berkeley | Fire-Tac | Alameda County Fire | 1 |
| 3105 | c21 | T | Berkeley PD1 | Police Dispatch | Law Dispatch | Berkeley | 1 |
| 3106 | c22 | T | Berkeley PD2 | Police Ch 2 | Law Tac | Berkeley | 1 |
| 3108 | c24 | T | Berkeley PD4 | Police Ch 4 | Law Tac | Berkeley | 1 |
| 3110 | c26 | T | Berkeley PD6 | Police Investigations 1 | Law Tac | Berkeley | 1 |
| 3605 | e15 | T | UCB PD1 DSP | Police Dispatch | Law Dispatch | UC Berkeley | 1 |
| 3606 | e16 | D | UCB PD2 | Police Ch 2 | Law Tac | UC Berkeley | 1 |
| 3608 | e18 | D | UCB PD4 ENF | Police Enforcement | Law Tac | UC Berkeley | 1 |
| 3609 | e19 | D | UCB PD5 | POLICE TAC | Law Tac | UC Berkeley | 1 |
Note: BPD3 (RB1), BPD5, BPD7, and UCPD6 were not available due to encryption.
Transcribe System Overview
The transcription + historical site ran on a DigitalOcean droplet (Docker), ~$35/mo. Audio was stored on AWS S3 (~$2/mo). Whisper transcription cost ~$50+/mo (can be run locally with a GPU).
Real-time alerts to phone + Slack triggered on matched phrases—super handy for quickly tuning to priority incidents.
All configuration files (with keys redacted) and the customized transcription site are public here:
Software Configuration Files (GitHub)