After weeks of technical hiccups, practically each regulation enforcement company throughout the East Bay has now silenced their police radios.
Earlier than dawn Wednesday, all however one Alameda County company pulled public entry to communications between officers and dispatchers, finishing a region-wide shift towards secrecy that has prompted alarm amongst police accountability and First Modification advocates.
And in a shock transfer, the lone holdout — the Berkeley Police Division — might quickly be part of them.
The method to “encrypt” radio channels confronted a number of setbacks over the previous two months, as technical glitches delayed an costly, yearslong effort to finish many years of open radio waves. Police radios in Contra Costa went silent final week, however a snafu stored police channels in Alameda County open to the general public till Wednesday.
Berkeley metropolis spokesperson Matthai Chakko stated that the Berkeley Metropolis Council, as early as Oct. 28, will likely be requested to “encrypt Berkeley Police Department primary radio channels similar to every other jurisdiction in Alameda and Contra Costa County.”
Any change could be a reversal from a coverage the Metropolis Council handed in 2021 to “continue its practice of the primary channel being used in an unencrypted manner,” besides in restricted conditions comparable to serving search warrants.
Berkeley’s obvious abrupt change after all got here as a deep disappointment to Andrea Prichett, who helped discovered Berkeley Copwatch in 1990.
“They just totally abandoned their ‘reimagining policing’ perspective of five years ago,” stated Prichett, referencing a motion to reform policing that arose after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in spring 2020. “This signals a retreat from collaboration with the community. And it really will contribute to lack of community trust.”
Different police accountability organizations, First Modification advocates, native attorneys and a Bay Space state senator have all railed towards the transfer by native police departments to defend their radio chatter. They’ve argued the motion flies within the face of transparency, whereas threatening the neighborhood’s means to carry officers to account after they err on the job.
Regulation enforcement officers throughout the area say the secrecy is required after a 2020 directive by the California Division of Justice ordered regulation enforcement companies to work tougher to guard sure non-public data, comparable to Social Safety and driver’s license numbers of individuals contacted by police. The DOJ didn’t require wholesale encryption of police radio channels.
The Antioch Police Division helped pioneer the hassle in 2015, shortly earlier than a number of scandals ripped by way of the company amid claims of widespread civil rights abuses, violent arrest ways and racist policing. Three officers later pleaded responsible or have been convicted at trial of both conspiracy or civil rights violations, whereas dozens of officers have been positioned on depart amid the invention of years-long textual content exchanges that made frequent use of disparaging language in reference to Black folks.
The California Freeway Patrol’s Bay Space division additionally has but to drag its conversations off the general public airwaves, although the company plans to take action at a yet-to-be-determined date.
Not each company has gone to such measures. The Palo Alto Police Division reversed course after initially encrypting its channels — re-opening them to the general public, after citing the flexibility to make use of different means to guard citizen’s non-public data talked about within the 2020 directive.
Prichett stated holding police radio communications open to the general public is vital to making sure residents really feel protected of their communities. She referred to as for a sturdy debate about Berkeley’s potential radio encryption, calling it “a real setback for police accountability.”
“It’s really important to police accountability in our city that we be able to hear radio traffic and identify locations where interactions are taking place,” Prichett stated. “But the implications for journalists are pretty significant, as well as, public safety in general.”
“If I hear noise, I listen to the radio and pretty quickly, I can identify what’s going on,” stated Prichett, including that “the moves for transparency, the moves for community involvement and community safety are all meeting great pushback at this time.”
