You found it

A closet, a little computer, and two radios.

No newsroom. No staff. Just public radio, some open source software, and a lot of late nights.

What is actually running

  1. A Raspberry Pi.A credit card sized computer that costs about as much as a nice dinner. It runs all day and night in a closet in Des Moines.
  2. Two software defined radios.USB sticks, about $30 each, that can tune almost any frequency. Together they listen to the Iowa statewide public safety radio system.
  3. Open source decoders.Free software written by radio hobbyists turns the digital P25 signal, Phase 1 and Phase 2, back into voices.
  4. Speech to text.Each call is turned into words by a speech model trained on huge amounts of audio.
  5. A writer that keeps it plain.An AI reads the stream of calls and writes short, careful updates in normal English, and leaves out what it cannot hear clearly.

Why this probably will not last

Everything here comes from radio that anyone with a scanner can hear today. That is changing. Agencies across Iowa are moving their channels to encryption, which means nobody outside the agency can listen at all. Much of the Polk County Sheriff traffic is already encrypted. Westcom, the dispatch center for West Des Moines, Clive, Urbandale, Norwalk and Waukee, voted in December 2025 to encrypt its police channels. Those calls have already gone silent here.

Some of that is reasonable. Plenty of people think it goes too far. Once a channel goes dark, the public loses a window it has had for decades, and it rarely comes back.

If you think the public should be able to hear its own public safety radio, join the Morning Brief. When it is time to say something to the people who make these decisions, that is how we will let you know.

Get in touch

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