[Scan-DC] Little Rock to stream police dispatches on Web after 30-minute delay

[Alan Henney]

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)

September 24, 2014 Wednesday

LR to stream police dispatches on Web after 30-minute delay

BYLINE: SCOTT CARROLL ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

SECTION: ARKANSAS

LENGTH: 995 words

The city of Little Rock will stream computer-automated, time-delayed police dispatches on the city's website beginning Oct. 1 after police encrypted their radio communication in July.

The system, discussed by city officials and police during a City Council meeting Tuesday, posts the time, location and nature of a police incident 30 minutes after it occurs. The data are automatically extracted from computer entries made by police dispatchers. Dispatches will be available to view on the city's website for eight hours after being posted.

City Manager Bruce Moore presented the system as a compromise among police, the city, the public and the media, each of which had been seeking to access - or disclose - different levels of encrypted police communication in accordance with the state's Freedom of Information Act. 

Police Chief Kenton Buckner has cited officer safety as the primary reason for making real-time radio communication unavailable to the public. City Attorney Tom Carpenter has said that certain information broadcast by police, such as license plate numbers and home addresses, put the city at risk of violating privacy laws.

Police began encrypting radio communication July 31. A Cabot man and two Sherwood brothers filed lawsuits against the city in August alleging that police had violated state's Freedom of Information Act.

Randy Foshee, city director of Information Technology, said at the meeting Tuesday that implementing the system has cost $3,500. It runs on freeware, or software available at no cost. Foshee said there will be maintenance costs but did not provide specifics.

While the price was the least expensive of other options considered by police and the city, the system provides no vendor support should it crash. Technical problems will have to be addressed by the city, Foshee said.

"If it fails, people are just going to have to wait for us to fix it," he said.

Foshee said the city has been testing the system and that it should be able to handle high numbers of dispatches "if we have a really bad day and get a lot of calls." The system does not provide subsequent information after a dispatch is posted, such as whether officers have completed their response or whether the location of an incident has changed. Ward 7 City Director B.J. Wyrick said that concerned her. She said she frequently used a police scanner - before communication was encrypted - to receive real-time information on traffic conditions to plan her route home from work.

Such live updates would be valuable to the public if there was a police pursuit spanning multiple locations, Wyrick said.

"I think it's a good start," she said of the system, "but there is some action that's taking place out there, and people are not going to be able to protect themselves." Little Rock police Capt. Ty Terrell said Tuesday that police had considered using Tip 411, a text-message notification service, as a public alternative to real-time police transmissions. The service provides crime alerts and allows the public to submit anonymous tips to police.

A two-year subscription to the service costs nearly five times as much as the computer-automated system, and the information it provides isn't as immediate, Terrell said.

Terrell said that police would be sending about 450 text notifications per day and that significant staffing increases would be needed to provide alerts around the clock.

"I don't think anyone wants to receive that many texts," he said.

The city also considered providing redacted audio recordings of police communication to the public. Six days of recordings were requested by a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits filed against the city.

City Communications Manager Laura Martin said Tuesday that redacting the audio would have required "excessive and concise attention," as well as lengthy work hours by additional staffers. Carpenter said redacting the audio would require new recordings to be created.

The creation of a record is not required to satisfy a Freedom of Information Act request.

Carpenter said during the meeting that after the system is introduced, the city still would be subject to lawsuits over police audio recordings under the Freedom of Information Act.

He said by phone Tuesday night that he's drafting legislation that would make certain police broadcasts exempt from requests under the law, specifically radio channels that might contain officers' private information and response tactics.

"I'm worried about if John Doe gets [the information] and puts it on the Internet or Facebook or something like that, and suddenly you have something where you are dealing with officer safety in the future," he said.

Carpenter said that in the bill, recordings would still be subject to discovery in court. He said he was still outlining other facets of the legislation and that he was researching similar laws across the country.

The possibility of unencrypted radio transmission - streamed on the city's website with a 30-minute delay - was also discussed Thursday. Martin said that would require hardware and software purchases by the city and 24-hour-a-day staffing to redact personal information as it's broadcast.

"There's the fear that you could miss some personally identifiable information that goes out on the radio," she said.

Buckner said the system is "a step in the right direction." "The No. 1 fear that we had was that folks who were committing crimes, if they had these pocket scanners or these apps on their phone, that they could prepare for us in our response," he said. "So I think we've drastically reduced the possibility that they would be able to do that ... There's no perfect system. We've felt like this was kind of a middle of the road to give the public some kind of transparency, although delayed." Ward 5 City Director Lance Hines said Tuesday that he was concerned about a lack of public input on the new system, but he supports it anyway.

"It's better than what we have," he said.

This article was published 09/24/2014