If you have just started listening to the Lubbock feed, most of the confusion comes from callsigns and status phrases. Here is what the words on this site mean, and which ones you will actually hear in this city.
Fire apparatus are named for what the vehicle is and which station it runs from, so the number is a station number rather than a priority. Across the American fire service the pattern is consistent:
Patrol units combine numbers with a phonetic letter, so what you hear as "31-15" or "2-Adam-14" encodes a district, a shift and a unit rather than anything about the call. You will also hear DPS, the Texas Department of Public Safety, whose troopers work the highways and the Loop, and occasionally the Sheriff's Office on calls outside the city limits.
These are the four states this site tracks for every unit, and they are the ones dispatchers use: dispatched (assigned, not moving yet), en route (rolling), on scene (arrived), and clear or available (finished and back in service). "Show me out at" is a unit telling dispatch where it is stopping. "Disregard" or "cancel" means the call is being dropped, often because a second caller cleared it up or the first unit found nothing.
Lubbock PD's channels are dense with codes. These are the ones you will hear, and what the site reads them as.
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Signal 1 | Officer needs immediate assistance |
| Signal 4 | No further assistance needed |
| 10-4 | Acknowledged |
| 10-6 / 10-7 / 10-8 | Busy / out of service / in service |
| 10-10 | Fight in progress |
| 10-14 | Prowler or suspicious person |
| 10-15 / 10-16 | Disturbance / domestic disturbance |
| 10-20 | Location |
| 10-22 | Disregard, cancel |
| 10-23 | Arrived on scene |
| 10-24 | Assignment completed |
| 10-27 / 10-28 / 10-29 | Driver's license, vehicle and warrant checks |
| 10-32 | Person with a weapon |
| 10-33 | Emergency radio traffic, keep the channel clear |
| 10-35 | Call holding, no unit available |
| 10-37 | Suspicious vehicle |
| 10-46 | Motorist assist |
| 10-50 | Traffic accident; "10-50 with" means with injuries |
| 10-51 / 10-52 | Wrecker needed / ambulance needed |
| 10-55 / 10-56 | Intoxicated driver / intoxicated pedestrian |
| 10-57 | Hit and run |
| 10-58 / 10-59 | Directing traffic / escort |
| 10-76 | En route |
| 10-87 | Dead body |
| 10-91 / 10-95 | Pick up prisoner / prisoner in custody |
| 10-97 / 10-99 | Possible wanted person in a vehicle / wanted person or stolen vehicle |
| Code C / B / A / K | Accident with minor / moderate / serious / fatal injuries |
10-96 is a mental-health call. Those are never published here, by rule.
Straight from our own data: the units attached to the most incidents on this site over the last month. Frequency here reflects what comes through the feed clearly, so treat it as a listening guide rather than a workload ranking.
| Callsign | Incidents |
|---|---|
| Engine 3 | 201 calls |
| Engine 6 | 138 calls |
| Engine 1 | 127 calls |
| Engine 8 | 123 calls |
| Engine 7 | 122 calls |
| Engine 9 | 121 calls |
| Engine 4 | 120 calls |
| Engine 17 | 90 calls |
| Engine 12 | 87 calls |
| Engine 14 | 82 calls |
| Engine 13 | 77 calls |
| Engine 5 | 74 calls |
| Truck 7 | 59 calls |
| Engine 19 | 56 calls |
| Engine 2 | 54 calls |
| Truck 17 | 51 calls |
| Engine 16 | 50 calls |
| Battalion 2 | 48 calls |
| Engine 18 | 46 calls |
| Quint 10 | 42 calls |
| Engine 15 | 39 calls |
| Truck 1 | 37 calls |
| Battalion 1 | 30 calls |
| Truck 4 | 27 calls |
More on where these labels come from in how it works.