POLICE SCANNING

I just returned from watching fireworks from the roof an apartment building in Hancock Park and now I’m indulging one of my newest obsessions. Police scanning. Since I write crime novels, my boyfriend thought it would be a good idea to give me a police scanner for Christmas. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security held it up in customs to make sure it couldn’t receive their frequencies. I had no idea how addictive it would be; it looks like scanning is a way of life for some people. Nothing forces me to appreciate the size and diversity of Los Angeles like listening to the scanner. It’s surreal to spend your evening switching back and forth between a shooting in Compton and a bunch of Sheriff’s detectives bitching about a publicist who refuses to shut down her swanky party at the Mondrian hotel until she hands out the gift bags.