[Scan-DC] Going silent: Fort Collins police to block radio traffic from public

[Alan Henney]

Not quite D.C., but some interesting similarities.


Fort Collins Coloradoan (Colorado)

November 5, 2012 Monday

Going silent: Fort Collins police to block radio traffic from public

BYLINE: By, Robert Allen

SECTION: LOCAL NEWS

LENGTH: 1868 words

RobertAllen at coloradoan.com

Passengers on the Route 1 Transfort bus didn't know there was an armed robber on the loose when their bus stopped at a red light near the One-Stop Gas Station.

"We thought it was a fire ... All the emergency vehicles had arrived and had blocked southbound College (Avenue)," said passenger Douglas Medina, 35, of Fort Collins. "Everybody on the bus was like, 'What's going on?' and I was like, 'Hey, let me turn on my police scanner right quick.' "

Soon everyone on the bus could hear through Medina's iPhone that police were seeking a white man - shorter than 5-foot-10, wearing black pants and a black Dickies jacket - suspected of assaulting three people while robbing the gas station.

That was at roughly 12:53 p.m. Oct. 18, more than an hour before police released similar information to the public through an email and tweet from the city's Twitter account. 

The public's ability to listen to taxpayer-funded police communications will soon be a rarity. As Fort Collins Police Services switches to encrypted radios over the coming months, messages like the one Medina overheard are likely to start being communicated outside public purview.

Fort Collins Police Chief John Hutto said the gas station robbery is an example of why the public shouldn't be able to tune in to the police radio stream. For Medina and his fellow listeners, the red light turned green, and their bus continued on its route. But Hutto said other curious listeners might have been drawn into a potentially dangerous situation.

"We want people out of the area," he said, adding that "all sorts of people" were showing up at the robbery scene when there was an "armed guy in the area."

Within the next two years, public listeners will hear less of Fort Collins police radio traffic. New equipment allows police to encrypt transmissions in an attempt to protect citizens' private information - and the security of police operations - at no added cost to taxpayers, Hutto said.

A new radio system going online in a couple months has for the first time made it easy to choose who gets to listen to the emergency transmissions. His department hasn't yet decided how many channels will be encrypted, and Hutto said he will balance "transparency with what I consider practical operational needs."

However, Fort Collins residents concerned about police accountability - and even sheriff's officials in nearby Boulder County - say there are benefits to keeping transmissions available to the public.

'Double-edged sword'

Fort Collins resident Doug Baker has listened to police radio traffic for about 15 years. As departments use more smartphones and in-car computers to communicate, he's already noticed a decrease in transmissions of sensitive information.

Baker isn't surprised at Hutto's decision and sees encryption as a "double-edged sword," with understandable security concerns at odds with public transparency.

He's been able to hear officers in some agencies "use police power in a way that most people wouldn't expect."

"Eventually, they could do things that are really abusive of their power and nobody would know about it," he said. "... If I'm not watching what they're doing, then who does?"

Since Hutto was sworn into office last December, he has brought more transparency to the police force. He's hosted several community meetings and worked to bridge gaps between cops and the public.

Speaking on the One-Stop robbery, he pointed to his agency's Twitter post as part of a push to increase engagement through social media in the next year, including development of a Facebook page.

"My goal is not that it's a narrowed stream (of information), but a repositioned stream," he said.

Baker's not convinced.

"Who's in control of that information?" he said. "If I'm the official police blogger or Twitter person, I'm only permitted to release some details."

But having the choice to determine what goes to the public can keep officers safe, said Hutto, who previously served as assistant chief in Austin, Texas. While there, Hutto said he knew of multiple incidents of criminals listening to police radio transmissions to set up ambushes during crimes.

He wasn't aware of a specific example of this happening in Fort Collins.

Police Capt. Cory Christensen said that in 1999 an armed group of burglars here listened to police radio traffic in a failed attempt to elude capture.

"We know one of their strategies was to listen in to scanner radio," Christensen said.

Open or closed

For several decades, anyone with the money to buy a radio scanner has been able to listen to local police, fire and EMS transmissions. But advances in Internet and smartphone technology have made it cheaper and easier for more people to hear what's happening.

Special tactical channels such as SWAT, narcotics and investigations communication have long been encrypted locally and across the country. The largest website to transmit public radio waves, Radioreference.com, prohibits transmission of such sensitive channels among its 3,215 audio feeds, said CEO Lindsay Blanton III.

Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles police leave their general channels open so people can hear activity.

"Those agencies barely use any encryption," Blanton said.

The Boulder County Sheriff's Office offers a link on its website to its general radio feed on Radioreference.com.

"Our sheriff has always been big on transparency and the public needs to know what you're doing and why and how, and this is one of the ways we do it," said Boulder County Sheriff Cmdr. Rick Brough.

Others police agencies have gone the other direction; those in Washington, D.C., and Orlando have hidden most or all of their transmissions from the public.

In Larimer County and Fort Collins, a handful of tactical channels already is encrypted. Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said his agency has the capability to encrypt its radio traffic but doesn't because of concerns that its radios won't be able to connect with those of Colorado State Patrol, the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies.

"A good example is the High Park Fire," Smith said. "Man, if those agencies hadn't been able to jump on and communicate, it would be extremely problematic."

Like Hutto, Smith has concerns about criminals listening in on his officer's communications. If all emergency responders could communicate with each other under encryption, "I would seriously consider it."

Hutto said there will always be a need for some open communication with other organizations, but it's only a matter of time before most law-enforcement transmissions occur behind a wall of encryption.

"As you see an increase in the capability of criminals to listen in on our frequencies, I think you're going to find more and more agencies (encrypting)," he said. "We will never encrypt everything."

Private information

Sometimes the names and homes of people attempting suicide are released over the radio. Names of child victims have been broadcast, as has the occasional Social Security number.

Privacy, and exposing people to potential identity theft, are concerns for the Fort Collins police chief. Hutto said it's "very hard to prove" a specific instance of identity theft but that it "seems dangerous" to release personal information to an "ever-expanding" audience.

"There has to be a line you draw," Hutto said. If an agency had the ability to hide private personal information and didn't do it, there could be some liability and possible lawsuits, he said.

Has that ever happened?

"I don't know," Hutto said. "It's a concern I have."

Blanton said police already use mobile computers and smartphones as "mechanisms for passing sensitive information" to each other without broadcasting over the radio.

"It's kind of a shallow argument," he said.

Hutto argues that officers in Old Town Fort Collins work primarily on foot, away from their cruisers' computers and sometimes have an urgent need to share sensitive facts with multiple officers - not just one officer at the other end of a cellphone call.

Poudre Valley EMS provides ambulance service in Fort Collins and uses only open radio channels. Spokesman Wyandt Holmes said he understands Hutto's safety concerns and it's a "fair request" to encrypt if "all it takes is a flip of a switch to keep ahead of bad guys."

Holmes said ambulances carry the same scanners available to the general public to keep abreast of police activity. "It'll be just as encrypted for us as it would be for anyone else," he said.

But the ambulances and firefighters in Fort Collins are dispatched out of the same office as police. Holmes said if paramedics are called to a scene, they can be patched in to the police channels.

"Once we're patched, the public can hear it also," he said.

Both Holmes and Poudre Fire Authority Capt. Patrick Love said they weren't aware of any plans for their services to switch to encrypted channels.

"Our system doesn't normally involve any worries about secure communications," Love said.

A 'moot point'

When the bus was stopped near the One-Stop Gas Station robbery scene, Medina said even the city bus driver didn't know what was going on until information started coming in through Medina's iPhone.

"Everybody was interested," he said. "Another plus is, just around your neighborhood, you see something happening and want to know what's going on."

Medina said neighborhood watch people who see flashing lights might want to know whether it's related to a burglar walking around or a cat stuck in a tree.

Hutto said transparency is important to him, and more conversations are planned before Fort Collins radio traffic begins to vanish from public channels.

"We have not made any final decisions," he said.

In five years, when nearly every organization Fort Collins police work with has the ability to encrypt, it will be a "moot point," he said.

"To focus on transparency I think is short-sighted," Hutto said. "None of us wants to be less transparent, but we have to look at the reality."

Smith said it's difficult to say whether open radio transmissions are bad for his agency.

"I don't really take an opinion on it," he said. "It is what it is. It's out there on the public airway. If it creates a security concern - which it does at times - if it's going to make it less safe for the community, officers and deputies, then we're probably going to use what technologies we can."

Easy upgrade

It used to cost an extra $600 to $1,000 to equip one police officer with equipment to transmit encrypted messages. The expense wasn't worth it, said Fort Collins Police Chief John Hutto.

"We have to be caretakers of the taxpayers' dollars, and no one would see it as reasonable when it was very, very expensive to encrypt radios," he said. "But that balancing test goes away when it's no longer a cost."

The new, agency-wide Motorola APX 6000 radio system already included encryption capabilities when it was purchased for $1.7 million. And it was a planned purchase: Police had been saving for it the past 10 years as the previous system neared obsolescence, Hutto said.

The new radios don't have better range, and other than being newer there isn't much difference in their capability. Hutto said the old radios were reaching their "end of life," and encryption is the "biggest" difference.