Since Oct. 15, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office (DGSO) has encrypted their radio traffic on its police scanners. Officers and dispatchers use scanners to communicate, often unintentionally sharing raw information with the public. But what does this mean for law enforcement accountability?
Ryan Karpman | @KarpmanRyan
“The FBI came in and said this is very sensitive information, we can’t put it out over the air anymore. So, they made an unfunded mandate that said we all needed to be on encrypted radio channels in December ‘22 I believe is when it came down, but they gave us about a three-year window,” Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister said.
While the move provides security for law-enforcement communication, locals have voiced concerned about diminished accountability for first-responders.
One person leading this opposition is local First Amendment lawyer Max Kautsch.
“This policy is heavily weighted in favor of law enforcement interests and has given short shrift to the public interest, and that is the problem,” said Kautsch.
Radio encrypting throughout the country brings worries to people about the role of the media reporting on police events and just how effective they can be.
A recent headline from the Johnson County Post read “Police scanners in Johnson County will soon go dark. What does that mean for transparency?”
“Why can’t they also recognize that there’s a public interest component here, and that the public does need to know and that it has been a traditional avenue of communications,” said Kautsch.
With live radio traffic now encrypted, the DGSO is pointing the public to their website where they can find call logs.
“You’re just gonna need to go to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office website and find the call log instead and then start looking through those calls,” said Armbrister.
These call logs (pictured below) show nearly every call a sheriff’s officer responds to, with updates occurring within minutes of dispatch.
To view the DGSO call log, visit https://dgso.org/index.php/dgso-call-log-report/