Did you know that using a police scanner app in some American states is illegal? Apparently crooks don’t care about that anyway, but one criminal believed he was doing the smart thing by using an Android police scanner app whilst being the getaway driver in an armed robbery.

According to an article over on Droid-life by way of MSNBC, a getaway driver was listening to his Android police scanner app whilst his partner in crime were going about an attempted armed robbery when he realised the cops were on their way so drove off leaving his partner behind.

The guys in question, one Matthew Hale was eventually pulled over and arrested for both attempted robbery and illegally using a police scanner. Hale is facing felony charges of attempted armed robbery and bail was set at $25,000.

At the time he was caught Hale had a police scanner app on his Motorola Droid smartphone, and in Indiana it is illegal to have a police scanner on your mobile device without a licence to do so by the FCC and local law enforcement.

The moral of the story is, if you have a police scanner app on your Android device, of which there are several on the Android Market, make sure your state don’t class it as an illegal act…so how many of our readers are now going to check?