Post last updated at 5:16 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1:
Douglas County is going dark.
Area law enforcement calls will no longer be broadcast on emergency radios — aka scanners — starting Tuesday, Oct. 15.
The change means that for most law enforcement incidents within Lawrence city limits, there will be nowhere for the public to turn for immediate information. That includes media — reporters will not be able to access law enforcement’s radio traffic to cover incidents as they’re unfolding and help inform the public, either.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office announced the planned change Tuesday morning.
Why is this happening?
Sheriff Jay Armbrister pointed to changes in the FBI’s criminal justice information services security policy as the impetus for encrypting scanner traffic, calling it an “unfunded mandate from the federal government.”
An FBI policy handbook from 2022 states in part that “When CJI (criminal justice information) is transmitted outside the boundary of the physically secured location, the data shall be immediately protected via encryption.”
“The FBI CJIS policy is aimed at protecting the privacy of victims, witnesses and suspects when their personal information is transmitted over a law enforcement radio,” according to a news release from the sheriff’s office about the plans to encrypt radio traffic. “This can also include Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and medical and mental health conditions and histories.”
DGSO is pointing to that policy as the reason for the encryption. Other law enforcement agencies have pointed to the same.
However, previous FBI policy handbooks dating back as far as 2017 and possibly 2011 include the same language — it’s not a change. A 2014 version of the policy states that “… data shall be immediately protected via cryptographic mechanisms (encryption)” — not identical, but materially the same.
George Diepenbrock, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said via email Tuesday that “As mentioned yesterday, the Kansas Highway Patrol handles audits of CJIS compliance for agencies in Kansas. In conversations with KHP, this policy, 5.9.2., became effective in late 2022 and became auditable at that time. That would be the difference. Our understanding is that auditors have used this time to educate agencies on the policy and how to comply as part of their next audit.”
We’ve reached out to the Kansas Highway Patrol to clarify why a policy that had been in effect since at least 2014 did not become auditable until 2022.
Armbrister said the move to encryption has been in the works for some time, but it has required all the area law enforcement agencies to get their equipment ready. Radio replacements are not cheap, and it has taken time.
“We, as a group of local heads, have really just been in agreement that we’ll do it when we’re all able to,” Armbrister said, referring to encrypting radio traffic.
Local law enforcement stopped airing the addresses of most calls back in 2020, primarily citing concerns about officer safety.
“We were having third-party bad actors that were utilizing the addresses and the information and going to scenes to interject themselves in — whether it be for nefarious reasons or simply for content creators and auditors to go and and create their profit racket content,” he said, noting that the change occurred before he was elected as sheriff. “It really did become an officer safety issue — not that auditors and the people holding police accountable don’t have a place in this room, because they absolutely do. They just have to do it a certain way, and they were using our information against us to put themselves in a position where they can actually do harm, as opposed to just transparency.”
Armbrister said he wouldn’t pretend there were no benefits to law enforcement of encrypting the radios.
“I don’t know that there’s any penalty for not falling into compliance, but what I know is that it does benefit us by encrypting so we can now go back to broadcasting addresses for officer safety reasons, but also being able to talk freely when it comes to pertinent information that people need on the scene or dispatch needs, and not have to, you know, give out personal information over the air,” he said.
How will I be able to access realtime information?
Some other law enforcement agencies that have encrypted their emergency radios have made efforts to ensure the public still has access to information about what’s going on around them. Thirteen law enforcement agencies in Johnson County went dark in January. At the same time, Lenexa police — citing the same FBI policy as the reason for going dark — announced a realtime call log to their website so that people could see at least the initial nature and location of a call as it was happening.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office already maintains a realtime call log online, though it doesn’t currently include call locations. That could potentially change in the future with radio encryption, Armbrister said. That’s available at dgso.org/index.php/dgso-call-log-report/.
The Lawrence Police Department — which handles the majority of calls within city limits, including calls at Lawrence schools — does not have plans to make a similar realtime log available.
LPD releases a “24 Hours of Calls” list that spans from 6 a.m. the first day to 6 a.m. the second day. It includes incident numbers, times, dates, general locations, general natures of most calls and whether a report was created. The logs are automatically emailed to media at 1 p.m. each day, so generally about seven hours following the most recent call listed on the log. We post the lists daily at this link.
LPD will increase the release of that report to twice daily by the end of the month, according to a statement from Chief Rich Lockhart.
Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical calls will not be encrypted and will still be aired over emergency radios. One example of a website and app that enable the public to listen is Broadcastify. The Douglas County feed is available to listen online at this link. LDCFM also uses the PulsePoint app, which provides basic information about a call at a glance.
Asked whether he was concerned that dispatch might start to receive more calls from people wondering what’s going on with a particular incident, Armbrister said he hadn’t thought of that.
“I would ask people to not do that, obviously, just because those dispatchers are doing very vital work and shouldn’t be having to quell people’s curiosities,” he said. He does understand, though, that people might see something going on down the street from their home and be concerned about their own well-being.
“I could actually see people calling up and being like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a fire truck and two police cars next door. Do I need to be worried about anything?'” Armbrister said. “And honestly, that’s a fair question. It really is. It may be nothing. But then again, you know, if I put myself in that position and I don’t know what’s going on, I would want to know if I need to worry about anything.”
He pointed to his department’s online call log to help answer those kinds of concerns and said DGSO is trying to post more on its social media channels to let people know what’s going on.
LPD did not directly respond to questions about the changes but did provide this statement attributed to Lockhart: ”The decision to encrypt the radio system was an operational decision made by the Emergency Communications Center and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. We are supportive of the decision. We will continue our commitment to be open with our community through our detailed calls for service report. With this change from the ECC, we are going to increase the release of our calls for service report from once to twice daily by the end of October. As always, we provide information on significant incidents through our social media outlets.”
What transparency concerns does this raise?
As these kinds of changes have been enacted across the country, media members and freedom of information advocates have pushed back.
The Kansas City Star editorial board wrote about Johnson County’s encryption in a January editorial, connecting the move to an August 2023 law enforcement raid of the Marion County Record newspaper in Marion County, Kansas, in a broader look at issues surrounding law enforcement transparency and abuse of power.
Douglas County law enforcement does not necessarily have to encrypt all of their radio communication.
Agencies can be compliant with the FBI’s policy “by either encrypting all of your talkgroups/channels or you can dedicate one informational talkgroup/channel” to run all checks on driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, warrants and criminal histories, according to a May 2023 Kansas Criminal Justice Information System newsletter, which also referred to the federal policy as a change.
Armbrister said Monday that the agency already has an info channel where they can run that kind of information. We asked DGSO if it would be possible to simply encrypt that info channel and leave other law enforcement radio traffic open to the public.
“As far as why we don’t just encrypt our info channel and leave the rest open, we believe the detailed and personal info broadcast on that main channel should be protected. And to ask a responding officer to switch channels in an emergency situation or go to a computer or phone to receive certain information is simply not reasonable,” Armbrister said in an email Tuesday afternoon.
Armbrister also reiterated that “in the name of officer safety and efficiency, we intend to go back to dispatching addresses on the main channel, and we cannot do that on an unencrypted channel because we won’t risk officer safety or the safety of involved parties to a call for service.”
Max Kautsch, a Lawrence attorney and advocate for open government and freedom of information, shared an opposing viewpoint.
“Regulating scanner traffic should force law enforcement to consider how to balance two important but competing interests: officer safety and public concern about whether law enforcement is doing its job,” he said. “There is no balance if the traffic is completely encrypted.
“Alternatives, such as a delayed channel accessible to the public, would give law enforcement the leg up on getting to a scene but still allow the public to (learn) about matters impacting public safety,” Kautsch continued. “Law enforcement should consider whether the purported benefits of encryption outweigh the costs of denying the public a traditional means of learning about matters of public concern.”
For further context, here’s the FBI’s definitions of criminal justice information, taken from the 2022 policy handbook:
2022-CJIHow can I help boost transparency and accountability?
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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