[Scan-DC] Hearing: Terror attack showed need for secure radio, vests

[Alan Henney]

Associated Press Online

March 19, 2016 Saturday 4:02 AM GMT 

Hearing: Terror attack showed need for secure radio, vests

BYLINE: By AMY TAXIN, Associated Press

SECTION: DOMESTIC NEWS

LENGTH: 364 words

DATELINE: SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. 

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) - When emergency responders descended on the site of the Southern California terror attack that killed 14 people, their scanner communications were broadcast live on the Internet, creating potential danger for them, state lawmakers were told. 

Police, fire and medical personnel lauded interagency working relationships during a state legislative hearing convened Friday to learn what worked in the hours after a husband and wife inspired by Islamic extremists opened fire on a luncheon for county health inspectors.

But they said officers from diverse agencies must be able to communicate safely without worrying about details of a crime being on a live feed.

"Our radio traffic was playing out in real time across the nation," said San Bernardino police Lt. Michael Madden said. "That is an extremely precarious situation for first-responders."

His comments came at a hearing of a joint legislative committee on emergency management called by state Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez, D-Chino.

A similar hearing was held by the committee after the 2013 shooting death of a Transportation Security Administration worker at Los Angeles International Airport. Lessons learned from that meeting prodded state lawmakers to pass legislation requiring agencies to cooperate on active-shooter training, Rodriguez said.

Since the Dec. 2 San Bernardino shootings, law enforcement and medical personnel have been evaluating how they responded when Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, carried out the deadliest terror strike on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

The 14 people killed and 22 wounded were mainly Farook's colleagues from the San Bernardino County public health department.

Farook and Malik died hours later in a shootout with police on a busy street in San Bernardino.

At the hearing, David Molloy, operations manager of private ambulance company American Medical Response, said he was concerned medical responders were sent to an active shooting without helmets or safety vests.

"What would have happened if they would have come back to the scene, or the triage area, and my folks were not protected?" he said, urging those protections be made required equipment.

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Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)

March 19, 2016 Saturday

Crime erupts, and the radio channel changes

BYLINE: By Robert Mills, rmills at lowellsun.com

SECTION: TODAY'S HEADLINES

LENGTH: 1319 words

LOWELL -- If you listen to police radio broadcasts via scanners or smartphone apps, you've probably noticed fewer reports of violent crimes in the city recently.

While crime is down, it hasn't stopped.

What has stopped are police radio transmissions of violent crimes made accessible to the public.

Lowell police have stopped dispatching the most violent crimes they respond to via radio frequencies that the public can hear. The calls are now being dispatched via an encrypted, secondary radio frequency that only police officers can hear.

Lowell's decision follows other police departments across the country that have switched to encrypted radio systems. 

Police here made the change in late February after more than a year of discussion and preparation.

Protecting officers

Superintendent William Taylor said the change was made to protect officers. He said the proliferation of smartphone apps that enable anyone to listen to police radio dispatches puts technology well within the reach of eavesdropping criminal elements.

Lowell police will leave the main radio frequency open to the public, while moving "priority one calls" to an encrypted frequency. Priority one calls include those involving gunshots, robberies, and crimes involving violence and weapons.

"They're the most serious calls that involve, almost always, serious acts of violence and weapons," Taylor said.

Taylor said the public still will be able to hear up to 97 percent of the department's radio broadcasts.

Some departments around the country have encrypted all communications, prompting protests from news organizations that rely on police radio traffic to report on police activity.

The Sun relies on such radio broadcasts to keep track of police activity so reporters know where to go to report ongoing incidents. Reporters also share information from radio broadcasts via social media to provide real-time reports on crimes.

Without access to broadcasts, reporters will have to rely on police to self-report such incidents in a timely manner.

Information about homicides and other incidents will be available via fire department and ambulance broadcasts, as those agencies respond to any incidents involving injuries.

But serious crimes that don't involve injuries will be difficult to trace unless police take the initiative to release the information.

Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 41, Section 98F requires all police departments to make a daily activity log, containing the address and description of all valid complaints received, available to the public. But those logs are not available at all times and provide a significantly delayed and less detailed source of such information.

In Lowell, reporters will still be able to hear on unencrypted frequencies when dispatchers tell officers to switch to the encrypted frequency for information on priority calls. Taylor said he will ask shift commanders to share basic information on such calls as soon as reasonable so the press can still respond to crime scenes.

'A slippery slope'

"The Sun has great respect for the Lowell Police Department, however, we remain wary of this new policy which serves to shut down public access to the real-time workings of a public law-enforcement agency," said Editor Jim Campanini.

"We know of no incident where a criminal has exploited a police radio frequency to avoid capture or harm anyone, including a police officer. In fact, crime is down in Lowell, which is a tribute to the local department's tactical training and techniques," Campanini said. "When the next technological advance comes along to break the encrypted code, will the police use it as an excuse to shut off all public communications? This isn't a nationwide trend in modern police work. It's a slippery slope."

One fear created by the ease with which criminals can listen in on police communications is that an armed suspect could get the jump on officers by listening to their communications as they move toward the suspect's location.

"We can't afford to have people we are potentially about to deal with listening in on our most dangerous calls and tactical information," Taylor said.

Taylor said a video recently emerged showing drug dealers in Camden, N.J., using smartphones to listen to police communications while using the information to coordinate their drug dealings.

District of Columbia police encrypted radio broadcasts, citing a crew of burglars they suspected were monitoring their broadcasts to escape from crime scenes before police arrived.

The issue gained prominence during the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, when scanner listeners published information regarding suspects that was broadcast on police radios, only to later discover those suspects had nothing to do with the bombing.

Broadcasts exempt

Greg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said his organization doesn't keep track of exactly how many police departments have begun encrypting communications.

Leslie said public-records laws rarely apply to such broadcasts, leaving the press with few options to pursue the issue as a public-records matter.

Massachusetts public-records laws concern only written records and do not apply to verbal communication.

"It's clear to us that when police limit access to this type of communication, it's the public that ultimately loses out," Leslie said in an email. "The news media needs that information to know how their police departments work, how prompt and professional they are, and whether they're getting their jobs done. And of course, there's also a great interest in knowing what emergencies may be occurring, and the media distributes that information much more effectively than police alone."

Police in New Orleans initially planned on encrypting all radio traffic, but gave into pressure from the public and media. In 2013 the department chose to encrypt only specific channels used by specialized units, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

In Massachusetts, Haverhill and Mansfield police, plus Harvard University and Boston College campus police, encrypt all communications, according to RadioReference.com .

No other departments in The Sun's coverage area encrypt radio broadcasts, though Taylor said he knows of at least one other department that is considering it, and he predicts that others will follow suit.

State police policy

Massachusetts State Police have a small number of encrypted radio frequencies used by investigative units such as state police detectives, the state police gang unit and the Violent Fugitive Apprehension Unit, according to spokesman David Procopio.

"We do not encrypt patrol channels," Procopio wrote in an email. "We believe that we are better served by non-encrypted patrol channels because it allows other agencies to monitor our patrol transmissions. Likewise, our patrols routinely monitor radio transmissions of non-encrypted local police departments in their geographic areas so that we learn of critical incidents in real time and can respond to assist much more quickly."

Procopio said state police use publicly accessible frequencies to dispatch troopers to critical incidents and make use of encrypted frequencies in other ways.

"Investigative units would use encrypted channels to, for instance, discuss the location of a fugitive suspect they are tracking or share sensitive case-specific information that, if made public, could jeopardize an ongoing investigation," Procopio wrote.

While some within Lowell police are said to favor encrypting all radio traffic, Taylor said he wanted to strike a balance with the public's desire to listen in.

"It's unfortunate for good citizens that want to listen to the communications as a point of interest, but from an officer-safety perspective, this is the way law enforcement has to go," Taylor said. "We've taken what we think is a very balanced approach to this."

Follow Robert Mills on Twitter and Tout @Robert_Mills.