With the chaotic situation that has arisen in the US in recent days , an app that monitors police frequency has become the most popular paid app on the App Store .
On Monday, 5-0 Radio Police Scanner, which costs $5, was the number one paid app in the App Store. A simplified version of the app with ads came in second, beating out TikTok, and among free apps, it was second only to Zynn, which has recently risen in popularity. Vice was the first to spot the app’s rise.
Last weekend, large numbers of protesters in Minneapolis, Louisville, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and other US cities clashed with police forces. Their demand is to end police violence, following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer last week.
The scanning apps allow protesters to listen to the police frequency live. App analytics firm Apptopia found that the top five police frequency scanning apps, such as 5-0 Police Scanner and Police Scanner, were downloaded 213,000 times over the weekend. That’s a 125 percent increase from the previous weekend — a record for police frequency scanning apps. 5-0 Police Scanner was downloaded 40,000 times between Friday and Sunday in the United States.
Other related apps also saw a surge in downloads, such as encrypted messaging app Signal. It was downloaded 37,000 times this weekend, a record number for the app. The same goes for community notification app Citizen, which was downloaded 49,000 times during the same period, according to Apptopia.
