Can anyone suggest sources to find list of what crimes are happening in a given county or area?
Im in an unincorporated area, so it would be the county sherriff responding to calls.
Don't want to sit and listen to scanners, as most of that stuff is encrypted now anyway I think.

Question:
If something happens and a crime is reported that a county sherriff dept responds to, that's generally public access isn't it?
Are there any decent websites that show crime events in your area?

During my short newspaper career in college, we’d just swing by the PD, tell them we’re from the small town newspaper and they had a sheet with 15 or 20 incidents on it with very basic info and that would get printed in the weekly paper.

I don’t know what they do now.

Dallas city has an online database of active calls as they happen. They clear after so many hours, so you kind of have to read it as you go. If there’s something of note, you’d better copy and paste.

My wife dispatched a call this week that had a funny response from patrol over the radio. The next thing she knows, the non-emergency phone rings and it’s a reporter from channel 11 telling her that’s the funniest thing he’s heard all week.

So yeah, some people still listen to the scanner.

Most bigger cities have some things up, either through the PD or via their GIS system

For example I think there's a bit more for Dallas than JoeMama says, here's the big list:
https://www.dallaspolice.net/resource/dpd_crimereport

There is a public safety tab on the GIS, but I don't have a login at the moment so I don't know what is on there now:
https://www.dallasopendata.com/

There's also this database with some towns in it, I think you can set geographical alerts.
https://communitycrimemap.com/?agency=Dallas,%20TX

https://cityprotect.com/map/list/agencies?toDate=2021-04-23T23:59:59.999Z&fromDate=2021-04-20T00:00:00.000Z&pageSize=2000&parentIncidentTypeIds=149,150,148,8,97,104,165,98,100,179,178,180,101,99,103,163,168,166,12,161,14,16,15&zoomLevel=9&latitude=29.590877099999997&longitude=-95.22941430000002&days=1,2,3,4,5,6,7&startHour=0&endHour=24&timezone=%2B00:00&relativeDate=custom

Nice, I hadnt see this one until now.  

However, I think since Im in the county and not within city limits, its the county sherriff that would have responded to things in this area.  Going to call their office today.
Supposedly there has been a few homes broken not far from me into and Ive only heard about it by chance while at a store.