[Scan-DC] Mentions Navy Yard Shooting (how much longer do we have to put up with this?)

[Alan Henney]

Arkansas Daily Weblog

July 28, 2014 Monday 8:53 PM EST 

Little Rock encrypting police radio traffic

BYLINE: Max Brantley

LENGTH: 594 words

Jul 28, 2014 (Arkansas Daily Weblog:http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/ Delivered by Newstex)
Lt. Sidney Allen, the Little Rock police information officer, distributed this message today:

Our radios are undergoing the first stages of encryption. The signal could possibly return by Friday, August 1, 2014. The time frame for full encryption has not been announced. 

The message has been interpreted to mean police radio broadcasts will no longer be publicly available. 

David Koon is looking into the ins and outs of this. Forbidden Hillcrest, a Facebook page that has built a big audience by monitoring Little Rock police radio traffic, isn't happy about it, to name just one.

As of today LRPD has begun encrypting police radio dispatch, therefore it will no longer be available to the public or the press. This was done with no public discussion and with no vote before the LR board of directors. Repeated inquiries to city officials about the subject over the last several months were answered with silence or misinformation.

Public silence will be a blow to a large audience of police scanner hobbyists who monitor the channel regularly. It will also be a problem for news outlets that monitor broadcasts, not only for breaking crime news, but also for traffic problems.

Lack of immediacy will be a problem. One questions is what alternative, if any, will be provided on traffic reporting.

A bigger problem is the simple absence of information. Case in point: Absent radio traffic, would anyone have known about the wreck, shooting and chase that began in Murray Park yesterday afternoon and concluded at the Waffle House just off Cantrell Road in Riverdale? No one was hurt. But the fact that it happened might not have been publicly known absent the radio traffic. A police department interested in a city's image might decide not to volunteer so many reports about untoward events with the knowledge that none of it was in earshot of regular listeners. 

On the flip side, it's fair to note the rise of quotes on social media from scanner traffic, some of which turns out to be inaccurate. The Navy yard shooting in Washington[1] was a particularly good (bad) example. Furthermore, there's a growing believe that, with cell phone apps, home burglars and others can tune into police radio broadcasts as a crime aid.

Little Rock is moving its signal to the Arkansas Wireless Information Network (AWIN), a time when some other departments have made the decision to encrypt. Said the Russellville police when they made the switch:

With the AWIN system our radio traffic will be encrypted. We know that for some people this will be a disappointing revelation. We understand that some of the community monitors our traffic on scanners that they have purchased. We have already received feedback from some of the community on anticipating the change; of course not all of it was positive.

We have made this change due to communications and operational security reasons. We have noticed that not all of the monitoring of our system with scanners was done with good intentions. On numerous occasions criminals were using it to track our locations and to deter their capture.

It's unclear until we hear more if this concern figures in the Little Rock encryption trial. More to come.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story[2] ]
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/news-outlets-often-stumble-in-quest-for-speed-and-accuracy/2013/09/16/e5444820-1f19-11e3-8459-657e0c72fec8_story.html [2]: http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/Rss.xml?oid=3400590id=comments