Some juvenile gun crimes can be directly tied to social media pages that post police scanner transmissions, according to Owensboro Police Department Deputy Chief J.D. Winkler. It’s just one of many reasons local law enforcement has encrypted their radio transmissions. Other causes given by Winkler and Daviess County Sheriff Brad Youngman include people making a game out of showing up to crime scenes, weaponizing the information that is broadcast, misinformation that spreads quickly on social media, traumatizing scenarios being scrutinized, and privacy concerns.
In simple terms, an encrypted radio transmission can only be deciphered by a receiver that has the same encryption codes as the transmitter. That means the general public can’t just hop onto the police scanner and listen to calls anymore. First response agencies across the country have begun moving to encrypted transmissions in recent years.
Winkler said the idea for OPD came up several months ago when someone he knew well told him something he found troubling.
“They were talking about the police scanner and how they and their friends, for entertainment, were following the police scanner and showing up on crime scenes and trying to beat the police to locations,” Winkler said. “I was given further examples by other people that this is a real thing that people are doing, and it was verified by officers that there were people showing up just to be there.”
Winkler said that’s concerning for a number of reasons.
“When you have … a lot of people that are showing up for entertainment, not only is it dangerous for them but it increases the need for manpower. I have to pull (officers) off of things to try to monitor that,” he said. “A number of things could happen. The last thing we need is other people making the scene more complex and adding more things for (officers) to think about.”
Winkler also had a list of other specific issues that led to the decision to encrypt radio traffic.
Among the most concerning is the rise in juvenile gun crime. He said the juveniles have been taking screenshots of social media posts and comments about those crimes and sharing them with each other.
“We started getting digital evidence off of phones. Some of (the juveniles involved in gun-related incidents), their goal was to get on the (social media page reporting scanner traffic). They were going out and participating in shootings — especially some of the random ones that you’re like ‘why did it happen at this location?’ — so they could get posted on the scanner page,” Winkler said. “It was like a game to them. That is obviously a concern.”
Another issue that Winkler felt the personal effects of is when information of incidents where someone died by suicide. He said it is bad enough when those details get posted on social media, but negative comments add to the trauma family members may experience. He said there have also been times when the families find out on social media before the coroner has made contact with them.
“I’m the one that has to talk to them and let them know that there’s nothing that I can do to control that. (All I can say is) ‘I’m sorry that that information came out … and that it’s out there for the entire world to see,’” Winkler said.
He added that many times the comments were “turning people’s personal traumas into entertainment. I know that a lot of people in this community don’t do that, but there is a significant portion that do.”
Winkler said it’s similar when information gets shared about vehicle accidents. He said it can cause worry for people with a family member who drives the type of vehicle that is identified; or worse, Winkler said, the family can find out traumatic information on social media instead of from law enforcement.
“And you add in that a lot of times, it’s not correct information. That creates a risk and in and of itself, the fact that it’s not exactly correct,” Winkler said.
Youngman also addressed the misinformation that gets shared on social media.
“The simple fact is that just because something is dispatched over the radio, does not mean that’s exactly what happened,” he said. “… The information the dispatcher is providing us is unverified. They’re not being untruthful, they simply are misinterpreting what’s going on.”
He gave the example of a caller thinking they saw a lost child and requesting a welfare check, but the deputy arriving to find that the parent was there the whole time and that the caller didn’t see the parent.
“We want people to call anytime they think they need something, but that doesn’t mean that the information that is dispatched over the air is entirely what’s happening,” he said. “And in fact, it oftentimes is inaccurate.”
However, Youngman said DCSO’s transition to encrypted transmissions was “purely a safety thing, not just for deputies but also for the public.”
“I talked to my staff and we sort of agreed that it was probably a smart move to make in light of some of the safety issues that we’ve encountered as far as the widespread awareness that we’ve experienced with scanner feeds,” Youngman said. “I certainly respect the right of people to know what’s going on, but we also live in a world where information is weaponized. It’s not uncommon for us to transmit people’s personal data over the radio such as birthdays, Social Security numbers, and things like that.”
He also said there are situations where it’s put out over the radio that a door has been kicked down at a house and deputies arrive to find the homeowners are out of town. Deputies then report that the door is not able to be fully secured, making the home vulnerable to a break-in.
“Of course, we don’t like that information to be out there,” Youngman said. “It’s one thing if it’s broadcast over the air, but it’s another thing when it becomes typed-out information that people can access later on.”
Owensboro Fire Department is also making the switch to encrypted transmissions, with Chief James Howard attributing the move to the type of information they transmit.
“We are always looking to take advantage of new technology in our emergency communications,” Howard said. “The information that is used on our radios is oftentimes sensitive and may even be protected medical information. We want to make sure we are able to be responsible in our emergency communications while providing the best services we can to the public.”
Daviess County Fired Department Chief Jeremy Smith said they aren’t making the move yet.
“As of right now we are not going encrypted but we may in the future,” he said. “It will be a large undertaking to make it possible due to all of the volunteer stations and the amount of radios that will need to be reprogrammed.”
The private information communicated over publicly available radio transmissions was also cited as a concern by Winkler.
“Officers are reluctant to communicate, because what happens if you say a name over the radio and that gets posted and it’s there forever, or the family members see it? You add in the fact of an an officer running somebody’s name over the radio to check their driver’s license status or to check warrants or whatever it is — somebody that may not have done anything but their name goes over the radio and everybody hears that and it’s out there,” he said.
Beyond the concerns of what is shared on social media, Winkler and Youngman said that active crime scenes can become even more dangerous if the subject has access to scanner traffic.
Winkler noted that on a SWAT operation in the past, a barricaded gunman made threats to officers. The gunman “was getting play-by-play” of everything police were planning to do because he could hear their commands over the scanner.
Youngman said DCSO has also received numerous safety bulletins from other agencies about incidents where they are warned to anticipate that one of the criminals may have a scanner and be aware of law enforcement’s response.
“I understand that scanners are fun and informative and things like that, but when people are using them against us in that manner, that keeps me up at night,” Youngman.
Winkler and Youngman said they understand there may be a negative response to switching to the encrypted transmission, but both touted the transparency of their respective agencies.
Winkler said, “In my opinion, we are one of the most transparent agencies that I know of. We send our arrest log every day to all the media outlets. We send (media) accident reports, we send the theft reports, we send all that stuff. We’re the only agency I know of that puts out an annual report on our crime statistics, even our internal discipline, all the statistics, everything that we do, to get that out to the community.”
Youngman said, “I’m a big proponent of transparency. I think I’ve spent the last year and a half proving that with our increase in our media reporting and using our Facebook page and other sources to get information out as soon as we can. But same time, when we weigh the safety of deputies and the safety of the public, sometimes transparency isn’t the number one priority. I think the way that we can sort of compensate for what we’re doing here is by increasing our transparency in other ways.”
Winkler and Youngman both said they know the majority of people that listened to the scanner were doing so to stay informed, but ultimately the safety concerns had grown too large to not make the switch to encryption.
“It’s not a decision that was taken lightly,” Winkler said. “There are articulable, multiple reasons for it. At the end of the day, we have to protect the community the best we can, and to an extent our not being encrypted was causing harm to a lot of individuals in our community.”
