[Scan-DC] The District's Police Scanners Go Quiet

[Alan Henney]

http://dcist.com/2011/10/police_scanners_go_quiet.php

DCIST

October 11, 2011 Tuesday 3:11 PM EST 

The District's Police Scanners Go Quiet

LENGTH: 528 words

Police radio scanner apps aren't hard to come by. About six months ago, I downloaded an iPhone app that allowed me to listen in on police radio communications. I rarely caught much of interest, but if you listened for long enough, something newsworthy could come in over the airwaves. But over the last two weeks, it's been radio silence, as a D.C. policy encrypting police radio finally took effect. 

According to police officials, it was the very app I had downloaded that helped motivate the decision -- according to them, just about any criminal could stay ahead of police movements with little more than a smart phone. But the new policy, announced in late August, hasn't only frustrated local journalists -- it has also drawn criticism from some public safety officials.

Vernon Herron, a Senior Policy Analyst at the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security and a former senior public safety official in Prince George's County, wrote last week that encrypted radios "will hamper attempts to have seamless interoperability in the region." He noted:

In other words, it is more difficult for bordering law enforcement officers to talk to their counterparts in D.C. during an emergency that may involve several jurisdictions. One senior public safety official indicated that the District's decision to encrypt its radios "puts interoperability back 10 years".While the problem may well be solved by having D.C. police simply give their encryption code to surrounding jurisdictions, Herron writes that it's not that easy. According to him, Prince George's County spent $70 million upgrading its radio system recently, and adding the capacity to decode D.C. police communications would cost an additional $6.5 million. These days, that's not the sort of money that's just sitting out there unclaimed.

Moreover, Herron rejects the idea that criminals were suddenly given a heads up to police activities because of the wide availability of new scanner apps. (There are isolated examples out there.) "[P]olice scanners are not a new phenomenon, they have been in existence for more than 30 years and it is true that some of the 'bad guy' use them to outmaneuver the police. But there are other channels available to police departments that are secure and allow officers to communicate in privacy without the need for encryption," he stated.

Of course, the Metropolitan Police Department may well be in a category of its own -- Washington likely faces more terrorist threats and large-scale events than many small cities in middle America. But more importantly, local police may simply be responding to the mishmash of state laws that makes it illegal to carry a portable police scanner in some states, but not all. 

Regardless, Herron still thinks that the decision is a step in the wrong direction, and that police should be embracing the media in its quest to better disseminate information about emergencies. D.C. Fire/EMS seems to have sided with him when it decided against "filtering" its popular Twitter feed, but it's unclear if police will follow suit.

Until they do, well, it's going to be mighty quiet out there for police scanner aficionados.