FROM where James Crockman sits, New York City is a nonstop flurry of fires, murders and mayhem.

Mr. Crockman, 52, is the weekend overnight man at Breaking News Network, a service that culls news reports from fire and police radios and sends them as alerts to news media outlets and other subscribers. A former warehouse worker, he commutes to BNN’s headquarters in Fort Lee from the Trenton area. From the office, it can be a five-minute drive over the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan, but Mr. Crockman has never made that drive. His New York is a virtual one, created by the crackling chatter of fire and police commanders and 911 operators giving a never-ending narrative of mishaps.

“If I visited New York, all I’d know about the city is ‘This is where such-and-such homicide happened,’ or ‘That’s where that deadly fire occurred,’ stuff like that — a breaking-news perspective,” he said last weekend during one of his 14-hour overnight shifts at the news desk.

But oddly, Mr. Crockman knows the city in a way that few New Yorkers do.

“He knows streets, neighborhoods, police precincts, firehouses, engine companies, ladder companies,” said Rob Gessman, one of Mr. Crockman’s bosses.

Mr. Crockman works four long overnight shifts, including on the weekends, and he seems born for the job. “Listening to the scanners was always my escape,” said Mr. Crockman, who has not married. For years he called in tips to BNN until the company hired him six years ago to work weekend nights, a peak time for crime in New York, which makes Mr. Crockman a main gatekeeper for the flow of so-called spot news in New York.