[Scan-DC] Canadian Police seeking control of radio chatter

[Alan Henney]

Ottawa Citizen

April 15, 2012 Sunday 
Final Edition

Police seeking control of radio chatter; The death of an officer in 2011 sparks a move to keep sensitive details from the media and the public, reports David Gonczol

BYLINE: David Gonczol, Ottawa Citizen

SECTION: CITY; Pg. B1 

LENGTH: 812 words

The "commercialization" by news media of the last words of a dying York Regional Police officer last summer has police forces across Ontario closing ranks to stop rebroadcasts and online streaming of officers' radio communications.

An Ontario-led Canadawide police initiative is insisting that the federal government introduce legislation to shut down the online streaming of police radio communications by individuals, now involving a proliferation of listeners fuelled by phone apps, and to prevent media rebroadcasts. Police say they have been left with no choice but to demand legislation after efforts to discuss their concerns were rebuffed by senior management at media outlets, particularly in the Toronto area.

Const. Garret Styles was fatally injured during a traffic stop in Newmarket on June 28. As he lay dying, pinned under a vehicle, he was in radio communication with a police dispatcher. That conversation was intercepted, rebroadcast and even transcribed with news of his death by many radio and television stations and news websites in Toronto. It was widely reported before police could even notify his wife that her husband had died in the line of duty. Styles left behind a two-year-old daughter and nine-month-old baby boy.

"The (police) chiefs and the commissioner of the OPP, well many of us, found this rather disturbing," said Joe Couto, a spokesman for the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. "We have been very frustrated, to be honest with you, because no one will talk to us about this in the media.

"Individual media will talk to us, but generally it is to defend the use (of recordings). But that's not the point. We don't want to debate whether or not what you did six months ago was right or wrong. We want to talk about let's make sure that this type of thing doesn't happen again."

Police organizations say they received many complaints from the public about media behaviour on the day of Styles' death. York Regional Police Chief Eric Jolliffe lodged a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

What began a few years ago as sporadic streaming of communications by police scanner hobbyists has become so pervasive that police say the intimate details of police work and private lives of Ontarians are widely available for anyone to hear.

A relatively small number of hobbyists, largely restricted in numbers by cost and technical know-how, have quietly listened to police communications for many years.

"We as police traditionally have never had many issues because people who use scanners are people who like to listen and find that the ultimate reality TV show and that's great," Couto said.

Some police forces, such as Ottawa and Cornwall, long ago encrypted their communications, while others are in the process. Much of the Ontario Provincial Police communication in the Ottawa area and eastern Ontario, however, is unencrypted and can be easily heard online. The website radioreference.com, with servers outside Canada, is a major clearing house for these audio streams.

Encrypting radio communications is expensive, but guarantees police-only access. The OPP already encrypts more sensitive areas of their work for intelligence, homicide and drug units. Officers in other areas of policing have come to rely on cellphones for privacy, but police admit nonencrypted radio broadcasts are still required in fast-developing emergencies or when several officers must quickly co-ordinate their actions.

OPP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Chamberland said the federal Radio communications Act made it clear that listening to unencrypted police communications was legal, but divulging that information or making use of it was not. Industry Canada officials concur, but legislation leaves prosecution to the discretion of police. Chamberland said the OPP had chosen to use its resources to fight crime rather than a series of complex investigations where the likely outcome would be small penalties.

"It just becomes a matter of return on investment especially when you have real crimes going on out there," Chamberland said.

However, the OPP may become fully encrypted as early as 2017, when Ontario's communication network, the Government Mobile Communication Project, is up for renewal. Chamberland said senior OPP officials were considering making a recommendation to the provincial government to encrypt at that time.

Jack Summers, general manager of Toronto-based Radioworld, says he has sold an average 1,000 scanners a year for the past 20 years.

Summers says the actions of the media in the Styles case were "highly illegal," but streaming police communications online remains in the public domain, as do the public airwaves used in the first place. The activity becomes illegal if it is done for personal gain, Summers said.

Speaking of Styles' death, Summer said: "The media used that signal for personal gain."

LOAD-DATE: April 15, 2012

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: / York Regional Police Const. Garrett Styles' dying words were made public before his family was notified.;

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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Aurora/Newmarket Banner

April 18, 2012 Wednesday 
Final Edition

Cops want tighter controls on radio calls

BYLINE: Joe Fantauzzi, jfantauzzi at yrmg.com

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 672 words

Ontario police leaders plan to consult fire and ambulance services in the coming months with the aim of lobbying Ottawa to ban their radio calls from being published. The idea, which comes after last summer's broadcasting of the last radio call by mortally wounded York Regional Police Const. Garrett Styles, is being driven by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and is supported by York's force. With that as a backdrop, York police is set to begin talks about encrypting its over-the-air transmissions as part of a larger discussion about the purchase of a new radio system. 

Both moves come after journalism oversight agencies the Ontario Press Council and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled rebroadcasting Const. Styles' calls did not breach ethical standards. The officer died after being trapped under a van while conducting a traffic stop in East Gwillimbury June 28, 2011. Amending the federal Radio Communications Act to prohibit publishing emergency broadcasts would help eliminate the re-victimizing of emergency services providers killed while on duty and safeguard investigations, Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police spokesperson Joe Couto said. The association will work with its federal counterpart to lobby Ottawa for the changes. Police have been advised the act requires that both interception and broadcast of a radio call be proven in order for a prosecution to be undertaken, a source familiar with the lobbying effort said.

Police want to see the act changed to simply require proof of the broadcasting of the call, the source added.

Ontario police were disturbed by how Const. Styles' final radio call was used after the officer's death, Mr. Couto said. "In our view, a discussion was warranted and a discussion was not forthcoming," he said. He denied the move is designed to crack down on the reporting of police incidents or people who listen to emergency calls for entertainment. If individual police forces want to shield radio communication from eavesdroppers, they can choose to encrypt their transmissions, but many don't because of cost and concerns about the technology, he added.

More information about the proposed new York police radio system is expected later this month when the force will presents its request to the police board, Chief Eric Jolliffe said in an e-mail.

He confirmed $10,000 set aside in each of the 2013 and 2014 budget projections is earmarked for the new radio system. The board meets again April 25. York police also sits on the committee that developed the idea to call for changes to the Radiocommunication Act. The legislation needs to be updated because times have changed, Chief Jolliffe said. "Our complaints to the Ontario Press Council and the broadcasters did not achieve the result we had hoped," he said. "However, we have no intention of giving up on this issue and we will do what is necessary to ensure no other family and no other police service has to go through that again." When Const. Styles, 32, died, thousands of people in York Region and across the country scrambled for the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available as the incident developed. York police, which had dealt with a similar case in 2007 when Det.-Const. Robert Plunkett died while on-duty in Markham, provided a photograph of Const. Styles and held a news conference within hours of the officer's death. However, word began to spread about an archived recording of Const. Styles' last radio calls, made to a dispatcher as he lay pinned beneath the van. By the end of the day, several news agencies had located the audio file on a scanner enthusiast website and incorporated it into coverage, either by broadcasting it on television, posting it online or quoting passages in print. While York Region Media Group obtained the audio recording, it chose not to publish it, given sensitivity about its graphic nature. A youth charged with first-degree murder in the officer's death remains before the courts.

Find reporter Joe Fantauzzi on Twitter @yorkcrime