[Scan-DC] Star-News resumes monitoring of Pasadena police radio transmissions

[Alan Henney]

Pasadena Star-News (California)

June 20, 2012 Wednesday

Star-News resumes monitoring of Pasadena police radio transmissions

BYLINE: By Brian Charles, SGVN twitter.com/JBrianCharles

SECTION: NEWS

LENGTH: 555 words

PASADENA - After more than five months of radio silence, the squawking sounds of Pasadena police chatter echoed through the newsroom Wednesday.

The Police Department released the key codes and talk groups for its digitally encrypted radio transmission, and this newspaper purchased a digital scanner to begin listening to those transmissions. 

Pasadena Police Department's talk group is 39760 or 2485, depending on the make and model of the digital scanner.

The feat required some help from a city technology staffer, but once in place, the radio chatter was sporadic for most of Wednesday.

The squawking of the scanner marked an end to a long battle between the city and the press over access to police communications.

"After months of us hammering the Police Department and City Hall for a lack of transparency, it's nice that we now have a limited ability to listen in on the Police Department," Star-News Editor Frank C. Girardot said. "It still amazes me that officials think the public shouldn't have access to the full spectrum of police communications in Pasadena, but this is a step in the right direction."

Police Chief Phillip Sanchez said his department heard the clamor for the return of open radio transmission shortly after encrypting the signal in January.

"The reality is that there were a lot of interested people, the public and other stakeholders, who were interested in listening to the transmission," Sanchez said. "Listening to that dialogue and concerns about access to that system it seemed crucial to look for a solution."

The department switched to a truncated system in January to comply with federal regulations set by the Department of Homeland Security. The department took the additional step of encrypting its radio signal out of concerns for officer safety and victim privacy.

But once the transmission was walled off from the public, a solution always seemed slightly out of touch. The department and City Hall promised to find a fix that would allow the public to listen in, but on several occasions deadlines to open up the transmission to the public came and went.

Technical glitches accounted for many of those delays and rather than roll out a system with flaws, Sanchez and the city delayed, Sanchez said Wednesday.

In an editorial, this newspaper argued that the media and the public has historically been able to monitor police radio traffic.

The public will now be able to hear the initial call for service broadcast; however, follow-up transmissions will be encrypted.

"Listeners will hear the initial broadcast to include call type, location and time of occurrence. The technology solution strikes a balance between open communication, victims' rights and enhancing emergency response," Sanchez said in a statement.

The department provides crime data on its website. The community can check for specific crimes within a day of the incident at www.crime

mapping.com . The public can see crime statistics posted atwww.cityofpasadena.net/ Police/Crime_Statistics.

Closed calls will be updated twice daily and will contain information from the most recent five-day period. Incidents involving minors, sexual assaults and other sensitive call types will be excluded from the daily postings.

The log can be seen atwww.cityofpasadena.net/police/ callsforservice.aspx.

brian.charles at sgvn.com

626-962-8811, ext. 4494