Brian Rokos, The Press Enterprise

When the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department rolls out a new radio system early this year, deputies will be able to more easily communicate with dispatchers and, in case of a regional emergency, other public-safety agencies.

But hobbyists who have enjoyed listening to scanners as deputies report dramatic details of the hunt for a bank robber or fleeing car pursuit will be shut out. The $172 million radio system will have an encrypted signal, meaning only those with special radios provided by the Sheriff’s Department will be able to monitor police activity live.

“The general public will be disinformed,” said Aram Attarashany, 23, a Renton, Wash., resident who listens to sheriff’s calls on the Internet and who monitored them on a scanner as a child in Palm Springs.

“The average citizen on the street wants to know what’s happening in their neighborhood,” said another disappointed hobbyist, Rick Di Fiore, president and founder of the Southern California Monitoring Association.

Sheriff’s Lt. Eric Briddick, who is overseeing the transition of the radio system, said it is important to encrypt the signal so criminals – who thanks to technological advances can monitor police frequencies on smartphones – will no longer know whether officers are on their way.

Briddick said he could not recall someone using a police scanner while committing a crime in Riverside County, but has heard of it happening elsewhere.

A check of Internet news reports found an officer-safety bulletin in Maryland that described officers hearing their radio chatter on a fleeing suspect’s smartphone. In Indiana, a getaway driver of a pharmacy robbery almost got away after hearing on his smartphone app that police were on their way. It’s not illegal to listen to public-safety frequencies, but it is illegal to do so in the commission of a crime.

Although scanner enthusiasts will be prevented from enjoying their hobby, that wasn’t the goal, Briddick said. “It is important for the operational safety of the first responders.”

Additional advantages of the system, Briddick said, include fewer “dead spots” in radio communications in a 7,200-square-mile county that encompasses soaring mountains and vast deserts. The county eventually will have more than 70 radio towers – at least 50 more than in the past, Briddick said.

Also, deputies will more seamlessly be able to talk with other agencies, including fire departments. Additional redundancies will make it less likely that a catastrophe could knock out the radio system, Briddick said. He said he expects the system will be turned on in March.

Riverside County’s current radio system, in use since 1992, has failed to keep up with population growth and the Sheriff’s Department’s needs, according to a news release.

“The public is better served when we can better communicate effectively,” Briddick said.

Info Available Elsewhere
Briddick noted that maps that mark locations and types of incidents, as well as listing such incidents, are available on the sheriff’s website at riversidesheriff.org by clicking on the name of each station. News releases about major incidents and deaths are also posted on the website.

The Sheriff’s Department also will keep the public informed of its activities by leasing the special radios to the media.

Some people, however, still will be disappointed by not being able to listen to live broadcasts.

“You can find out what’s going on if there’s a chase (by listening to a scanner),” Attarashany said in a phone interview. “You don’t have to look on the Internet to find out what happened. You can hear it in real time.”

He added: “I understand they (deputies) need to protect themselves.”

Di Fiore remembers as a child in the 1960s listening to Los Angeles Police Department calls when they were broadcast on the AM radio frequencies. Today, anyone with a scanner that can be purchased at electronics stores can listen to two-way communications of police and fire departments, amateur radio, aircraft, tow trucks, mall security and just about anyone who uses a two-way radio.

Di Fiore, who still lives in Los Angeles, said he understands the need for police to prevent the public from listening to communications between officers in SWAT, vice and internal affairs but believes encrypting all radio traffic is going too far.

“There have been people who listen to police calls on the scanner who have helped their local police or sheriff by calling them and telling them that the suspect they’re looking for just went down their street,” Di Fiore wrote in an email. “Why do police want to encrypt? I think that they want to hide the wrong things that they do.”

Blowback for Pasadena
When the Pasadena Police Department announced a plan to switch to an encrypted system in 2011, it received so many complaints from the news media and the public that it came up with a compromise: The initial call from dispatchers to officers would not be encrypted, but everything else would.

Additionally, Pasadena began listing its police calls on its website.

Pasadena Cmdr. Chris Russ said the encryption allows for much freer communication. For instance, officers now can receive over-the-air numerical codes that are used to open gates or doors of buildings.

On Inland police frequencies, officers can sometimes be heard sharing their private cellphone numbers over the air. Then again, an officer in a helicopter was recently heard ordering a sandwich.

Riverside County’s Briddick said that while discussions are continuing, there are no plans to allow the public to hear the initial dispatch calls.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, of which The Press-Enterprise is a member, said recordings or transcripts of radio communications should be available through public records requests.

But any legal protests of encryption would be unlikely to go very far, he said.

“I’ve heard the argument that they are taking away public access, but I can’t see any legal argument for requiring police to communicate in the open,” said Scheer, who added: “I’m puzzled that police departments didn’t do this a long time ago.”

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