My old neighborhood we saw several police cars show up at the house across the street one day, I grabbed my scanner and turned it on and heard another responding to a code 51 (IIRC). So i quickly looked up 'xcity police codes" on the internet and found a code 51 was a stabbing. Later after the police cleared the scene the lady renting the house was escorted back to gather her stuff to leave as her baby daddy had found her and stabbed her in the neck. When police/fire/ems comes down your street its quite handy to get any information a to whats going on, if it would have been a gas leak or somehting like that we would have evacuated, but a stabbing we stay in and lock the doors (and grab the shotgun) as the suspect could have still been in the neighborhood.
We regularly have tornado warnings/watches here and I pull out the scanner and scna though the local news, weather, and skywatch channels to see stay one step ahead of the tv news.