Members of the public no longer can listen to the Denver Police Department’s radio traffic after the agency on Monday followed through with its controversial plan to digitally encrypt officers’ transmissions.

By encrypting their radios, Denver police officials have blocked long-open public access to the communications of the largest municipal law enforcement agency in Colorado. The department joins dozens of other agencies across the state that have encrypted their communications in the name of officer safety and protecting police operations.

“It goes directly to that community safety aspect,” Denver police Chief Paul Pazen said of his decision to encrypt. He added that it’ll also protect the personal information of witnesses and 911 callers from being broadcast over public airwaves.

Yet press representatives and government transparency advocates have criticized the long-planned move, saying it limits journalists’ role as watchdogs in keeping Denver residents informed about the actions of one of their city’s key public agencies. A bill to ban law enforcement from encrypting all radio channels was killed in the statehouse last year.

Denver police officials said they will allow news organizations to purchase encrypted scanners from the city — they cost around $4,000 each — should they agree to a license governing their use. To date, no news organizations have agreed to the city’s terms.

“I’m disappointed that Chief Pazen has taken this wholly unnecessary step,” said Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor of The Denver Post. “Denver police were unable to provide a single example of Colorado media’s access to the scanner ever interfering with law enforcement activities or putting an officer at risk.

“Their insistence on encrypting scanner traffic should, therefore, raise important questions about the department’s commitment to transparency,” Colacioppo added. “Police activities filtered through the eyes of the public relations team will never provide the public with an understanding of how police in this city operate when no one is watching.”

The Denver Fire Department encrypted its radio traffic in April. Communications between firefighters responding to incidents have disappeared from publicly accessible scanners and websites, aside from the department’s automated dispatch alerts.

Protecting the community

In a news release on Monday, the Denver Police Department called the implementation of the new encrypted radio system a move to protect community members, victims and witnesses; to protect tactical and investigative information; and to enhance officer safety and prevent suspects from listening in to police communications.

Pazen, in an interview, cited generalized examples of suspects listening in to radio communications and admitting to knowing how to elude police during pursuits through traffic. In one instance, he said a suspect told officers they got his description wrong over the radio.

When pressed for specific cases, Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said investigators determined that Mauricio Venzor-Gonzalez — wanted at the time in a 2017 shooting — and people associated with him were using scanner applications to avoid police.

He also pointed to the case of Aaron Ritthaler, who is accused of multiple burglaries in the metro area since 2016. Ritthaler allegedly used a scanner application during the burglaries, Jackson said.

Some of the department’s radio communications already were encrypted prior to the new system, including among the SWAT team or on surveillance calls.

The encryption of all radio traffic is tied to the police department’s switch to a new digital system and repacking of the transmission tower, which began to be discussed in October, Pazen said. The new system will allow for better interoperability among first responders, he added.

Sticking points

Pazen met with representatives from media outlets multiple times over the last eight months as the police and the press worked to negotiate an agreement to allow access to the scanners.

“We worked very hard on the material aspects of it to make sure … there was absolutely nothing in there that would try to take any type of control (over content),” Pazen said.

Yet the finalized agreement does place limits on how certain information heard over the scanner — including police tactical operations and the identity of certain crime victims — can be used in news reporting.

The Denver Post and the city’s television stations hired an attorney to negotiate the terms of the scanner agreement with Denver police, though those discussions stalled weeks ago.

Those negotiations came down to two key sticking points:

An auditing provision that would allow any representative of the city to “examine any directly pertinent books, documents, papers and records” held by the participating news organization related to its use of the city-issued scanner

Another provision that would require any news organization signing the agreement to indemnify the city — cover the city’s legal costs — in the event of legal action stemming from information gathered via police radio transmission, unless the claim is determined to be “the sole negligence or willful misconduct of the city”

Those provisions are standard for city contracts, said Lauren Schmidt, the director of civil litigation in the Denver City Attorney’s Office — and city officials won’t waive those requirements.

“What we communicated to the media is that we’ve gone as far as we can go as far as the indemnification and auditor clauses,” she said. The parties, however, were able to negotiate other parts of the contract, she said, and were able to come to a “substantive agreement.”

Schmidt called the negotiations to even allow access to the radios a unique and earnest effort by Pazen to work with media outlets to inform the public.

An unacceptable choice

Although Pazen said the sticking points between Denver police and the local media are not about control over editorial content or input, not everyone agrees.

Allowing city representatives to go through journalists’ records puts the privacy and protection of sources at risk or could create “a dynamic where taxpayer-funded government agencies are put in charge of journalists’ work,” said Colorado Press Association chief executive director Jill Farschman.

“We don’t see any clause that puts anyone besides newsroom leaders in charge of content as being acceptable,” she said.

Media outlets play a critical role in public safety as well, Farschman said, and to suggest otherwise is “an insult to journalism.” Media outlets’ own ethics policies and guidelines also protect the privacy of victims and others, she added.

Pazen said that despite being unable to reach an agreement, the department will still make radio communications available through Colorado open-records requests — just not in real-time.

“We take our job of keeping the community safe seriously and we also value transparency,” he said.