Yea first Donald Duck secure then this LOL. In my county they use low band a lot or the use car to car which on 460 MHZ can be low power or sometimes they use 465 the to repeater freq without the PL tone to activate the repeater. The Ohio hits are generally on VHF 154-159 MHZ.
A funny story. One afternoon about 5 years ago a town close by was using 45 MHZ for their police and fire evidently without PL tones. Out of the blue comes a broadcast "This is a National Alert be on the look out for..brief description and silence..I had been hearing skip all day. The dispatcher and cop on duty was going on who was that? Was that you? I called them and said it was skip. They thought skip was some guy down the road. LOL
Generally I like to listen to distant stations and by their broadcast determine their location. If it's a chase I listen for business names and Interstate or state route numbers.
OK here's Snipes secret to cheap antenna's. Find a good fringe area UHF/VHF TV antenna. The bigger the better. Turn the antenna to where the elements face the sky and ground and then mount it that way. Next go buy a TV signal Amplifier 20DB works good. A TV amp runs 54-900MHZ. Make up you own connectors and hook it up. If you want to use more than one scanner on it then this part is real important. Get a TV coax 2-way or 3 -way splitter 5-900MHZ. If you don't use the splitter they will feed back on each other. You investment will be a fraction of what a designed for scanner system cost and is just as good. I point the TV antenna {Yagi} toward the north. If you need help mail me the system works great.