Union County Public Safety

What you're hearing

Police, fire, and ambulance radio for Union County, Iowa — Creston and the surrounding towns (Afton, Lorimor, Cromwell, and the rest of the county).

Most traffic is the Union County dispatch center working with sheriff's deputies, Creston police, and the county's fire departments and ambulance crews. You'll hear fire and EMS pages go out (tones followed by "attention Afton Fire..."), officers running traffic stops, and the everyday back-and-forth of a rural county.

We also monitor Adair, Adams, and Clarke counties, so their dispatch traffic shows up here too, along with the occasional Iowa State Patrol trooper or regional emergency channel. That's on purpose, not a mistake.

A few things to know

• Quiet stretches are normal — rural county. The feed is up even when nobody's talking.
• Fire and ambulance calls usually start with paging tones. Hear tones? Stick around — details follow.
• Routine dispatch traffic only — the same thing anyone with a scanner in Creston can hear.

Feed runs 24/7 from Creston. If it drops, it's usually back within a minute or two.

How to follow along

Radio traffic starts with a callsign. "Union County 16" is officer 16 calling dispatch — once you catch that pattern, conversations are easy to follow.

Paging: you'll hear two tones (DOOOO DUUUUU) per agency — sometimes 6 to 8 tones when multiple agencies are paged at once. That's often followed by 5-7 seconds of "silence," which is actually more tones going out that this feed doesn't pick up, before the dispatcher reads the page.

You'll notice a lot of repetition, especially on pages: "attention [agency] — you're needed at [location] for [issue] — repeat..." That habit carries over from the old VHF days, when rural coverage was spotty and your best odds were simply talking longer so somebody caught the signal.

10-codes you'll hear on this feed

• 10-1 — Unable to copy ("You're 10-1, I can't understand you.")
• 10-2 — I'm okay
• 10-4 — Acknowledged
• 10-6 — Busy
• 10-7 — Unavailable (different than busy — don't bother them unless it's an emergency)
• 10-8 — Back in service / available
• 10-9 — Repeat, please
• 10-10 — Fight
• 10-12 — Secure information alert
• 10-16 — Domestic disturbance
• 10-17 — Reporting party
• 10-20 — Location ("What's your 20?")
• 10-22 — Disregard
• 10-23 — Arrived on scene
• 10-24 — Assignment complete (commonly paired with 10-8: "24, 10-8")
• 10-25 — Meet up with
• 10-27 — Driver's license check
• 10-28 — License plate / registration check
• 10-29 — Wanted status check
• 10-32 — Firearm / gun
• 10-33 — EMERGENCY
• 10-41 — On duty (shift begins)
• 10-42 — Off duty (end of shift)
• 10-43 — FYI
• 10-46 — Disabled vehicle
• 10-50 — Vehicle accident (PD = property damage, PI = personal injury, P-Unknown = severity not yet known)
• 10-52 — Ambulance requested
• 10-55 — Intoxicated driver
• 10-56 — Intoxicated pedestrian
• 10-60 — Squad in vicinity
• 10-70 — Fire
• 10-74 — Negative (often the answer to a 10-27/10-29 check)
• 10-76 — En route
• 10-80 — Pursuit
• 10-99 — Wanted person / active warrant

For the curious: the setup

Uniden SDS200 base scanner fed by ProScan, streaming from Creston. System is ISICS (Iowa's statewide P25 Phase II network) via the Union County simulcast site, monitoring dispatch talkgroups for Union (primary), Adair, Adams, and Clarke counties, plus Region 4 interop channels.