[Scan-DC] proliferation of scanner apps

[Alan Henney]

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)

September 26, 2014 Friday

NLR police putting dispatches on Web Like LR, streaming to lag 30 minutes

BYLINE: SCOTT CARROLL ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

SECTION: ARKANSAS

LENGTH: 872 words

North Little Rock police will stream audio of police dispatches on a 30-minute delay beginning today after the encryption of its radio broadcasts earlier this year.

Dispatches will be available beginning at 9 a.m. at broadcastify.com, a website that streams radio communication by police and public-safety agencies across the world. North Little Rock police Capt. Leonard Montgomery said dispatches will include the time, location and nature of a police incident and subsequent information such as whether the incident has been resolved and if its location has changed.

Personal information communicated between officers after an initial dispatch - license plate numbers, home addresses and Social Security numbers - will be broadcast on separate channels that will remain unavailable to the public, Montgomery said. 

North Little Rock police began encrypting radio communications in January.

Like the Little Rock Police Department, which made its broadcasts unavailable to the public in July, the North Little Rock department cited officer safety concerns.

"With the proliferation of scanner apps, there was the potential for anyone with a smartphone to have the ability to monitor our broadcasts in real time," North Little Rock police spokesman officer Carmen Helton said in a news release Thursday. "We were concerned with the potential abuse of information compromising the safety of the public as well as the safety of our own officers." According to Montgomery, the department looked at typical officer response times and determined that a 30-minute delay was long enough to avoid tipping off suspects who might listen to broadcasts.

"Most of our [radio] traffic is the traffic stops, which is resolved way quicker. Response times to other crimes like burglaries and robberies, we respond way quicker [than 30 minutes]. The situation is going to be stabilized or over," he said.

And if an incident lasts longer than that, information on a police response is likely to have already spread, Montgomery said.

"If it lasts longer than 30 minutes, that info is already out there on Facebook or Twitter or wherever. And if it's longer, they can switch to another channel," he said.

North Little Rock police had the freeware program RadioDelay modified by its vendor to stream the dispatches. According to its website, RadioDelay is used to delay audio from FM radio in a TV tuner card or external input source. Its widely used to sync radio sports commentary with TV broadcasts, as radio commentary is usually a few seconds earlier.

Montgomery said that in an afternoon, the RadioDelay vendor tweaked the software to allow the 30-minute delay. Older police radios - antiquated after encryption - were reprogrammed to feed audio to RadioDelay via police servers.

Montgomery said the conversion, which included new power adapters for the radios, cost less than $500. The system has been tested for more than a month with "no real bugs," he said. Montgomery added that if there were technical issues, police wouldn't rush to address them.

"It's not like we're going to drop everything and take care of this. It's a public service, but it's low priority," Montgomery said.

North Little Rock police began exploring public alternatives to live radio broadcasts shortly after encrypting its communication in January, Helton said.

"Unfortunately, encryption also eliminated the ability of members of the media to access timely updates of police activity. The ability of scanner hobbyists to pursue their hobby was also eliminated," she said.

One option the department considered was notification service Nixle, which allows government agencies to message residents by phone and email. Police tested the service but decided it offered less immediacy than delayed radio broadcasts.

"It requires supervisors to actually take time and remember to send stuff out. But because in the heat of the moment, they forget and it's hard to get everyone on the same page," Montgomery said.

Trials of releasing information via social media were conducted but were scrapped because of the same issue.

Little Rock police and city officials considered similar public alternatives to encrypted police communication. They chose a computer-automated, time-delayed system that will begin streaming police dispatches on the city's website Wednesday.

The system was presented during a Little Rock Board of Directors meeting Tuesday - which Montgomery attended.

That system posts the time, location and nature of an incident for eight hours after the initial dispatch. Subsequent information is not posted.

Sherwood brothers Brandon and Jeremy Mullens filed a lawsuit against both cities and their police departments in August, claiming that encryption violated the state's Freedom of Information Act.

Cabot resident Sebastian Westerhold filed a lawsuit against Little Rock over police radio encryption later the same month.

Little Rock City Attorney Tom Carpenter has said that in addition to officer-safety concerns, the city risks violating privacy laws by broadcasting personal information on unencrypted police transmissions.

North Little Rock City Attorney Daniel McFadden did not return calls late Thursday seeking comment.

Both lawsuits are ongoing.

This article was published 09/26/2014