Des Moines, IowaTodayLocal edition
Standards desk

Standards / Updated August 17, 2026

Useful first. Certain only when earned.

DSM Radar listens to public radio traffic, organizes what it hears, and explains the limits beside the information. It is a community awareness tool, not an official record.

Clear labels

Scanner traffic, machine summaries, and independently reported facts are never presented as the same thing.

Human restraint

Unclear fragments stay fragmentary. Sensitive audio is not automatically promoted into a public story.

Correctable work

Every public page links to a private correction channel. Material errors should be fixed, not defended.

From radio signal to City Desk

  1. A receiver hears public radio traffic.DSM Radar uses configured public scanner feeds and locally operated radio receivers. Coverage can vary with reception, outages, encryption, and channel activity.
  2. Speech recognition makes a working transcript.Automated transcription converts short, noisy radio segments into text. Names, addresses, unit numbers, and radio codes are especially easy to mishear.
  3. Related fragments are grouped.The system uses time, channel, location words, and subject overlap to form activity threads. A thread is an organizing aid, not proof that every fragment describes the same event.
  4. A summary is generated with limits.The City Desk uses careful language such as "reported" or "heard" and omits material that is too unclear to summarize responsibly.
  5. Important events require review.The Verified Events desk is separate. A person reviews the source clips, removes sensitive material, and checks independent local reporting before publication.

What the labels mean

Latest scanner summary is a machine-assisted description of recent radio traffic. It can be useful and still be incomplete or wrong.

Live rule-based summary is a conservative fallback assembled from recognized fields when a full editorial summary is unavailable.

Verified event means the selected scanner material was reviewed and at least one credible published source independently corroborated the underlying event. It does not mean every detail in the radio traffic was confirmed.

Read every radio call as a report, not a verdict. DSM Radar does not determine identity, guilt, medical condition, or legal outcome. For emergencies, call 911. For authoritative information, use the responsible agency.

Freshness and gaps

The City Desk shows the exact Central Time of its latest summary and how long ago it was refreshed. A quiet screen can mean quiet radio traffic, weak reception, a source outage, or audio too fragmentary to publish. DSM Radar does not claim silence when it only lacks usable data.

Audio and privacy

Live audio is optional and may come from a third-party public feed. Unreviewed machine transcripts remain in private review tools rather than appearing as a public feed. Public summaries withhold civilian names, identifying details about minors, phone numbers, license plates, and other sensitive identifiers. Archived clips are published only when they add meaningful context to a reviewed event.

Corrections

If a summary is wrong, a clip is inappropriate, or context is missing, send a private correction request. Include the page, approximate time, and the issue. The operator can review the stored record and correct or remove public material when appropriate.