(TNS) — Erie County, Pa.'s $26.5 million, taxpayer-funded public safety radio project will go live in coming months.

When it does, portions of the new system will also go silent for the public and the news media.

News media outlets and scanner enthusiasts like Terry Hosack, who for years have monitored radio communications in real time, will no longer hear the radio chatter of local law enforcement when they're dispatched to crime scenes, car crashes and other emergencies.

That's because the Erie County Department of Public Safety, in consultation with local police departments, will encrypt the radio frequencies on which those agencies will operate.

"Law enforcement expressed the desire to have all of their communications encrypted," said John Grappy, director of the Erie County Department of Public Safety. "Erie County is honoring the request.

"At one time you could purchase a Bearcat scanner from RadioShack," Grappy said. "Now there are apps that you can download to your smartphone and monitor all that day-to-day activity. Their position is, simply, that it's inherently dangerous to law enforcement and the community. We are communicating sensitive information."

Encryption will cost county government $439,768, according to cost breakdowns of mobile and portable equipment purchased for the project.

The decision to encrypt radio transmissions applies only to law enforcement and not to fire departments, ambulance companies and other first responders. The Erie, Edinboro, Albion, Corry, North East, Lawrence Park, Union City, Lake City, Wesleyville and Girard police departments will be included in the change.

The only agency that won't will be the Millcreek Police Department, which operates its own dispatching center.

County officials believe the project, known as the Next Generation Public Safety Radio System, will significantly improve the ability of public safety forces to communicate within their own ranks and with other agencies, including those outside Erie County. It will eliminate gaps in the current system that are caused by hilly terrain in rural areas. And it will replace the patchwork of antiquated technology that has been in use for decades.

The radio project began in 2014 and discussions with safety service agencies that would ultimately shape how the radio system was customized happened throughout 2015, Grappy said.

Police chiefs in Lake City, Corry, Edinboro and Lawrence Park told the Erie Times-News recently that they or their predecessors requested that encryption be part of the system.

It's an issue of officer safety, they said.

Erie Bureau of Police Chief Dan Spizarny wasn't chief when the decision to encrypt was made, but he said he believes it was the right call. Encryption will keep law enforcement officers safe by preventing the bad guys from listening in, he said. It will also help keep personal information of crime victims and those who report incidents to police confidential.

"One of the issues we find a lot of during traffic stops and during search warrants, is that these people either have the scanners or the app on the phone to listen in on police calls," he said. "I can't tell you how many times we've raided drug houses and found police scanners. We've had traffic stops where the officers will hear the radio transmissions on the person's phone inside the car."

Neither Grappy nor Spizarny could point to a specific incident in which the public's real-time access to law enforcement communications has resulted in an officer or a member of the public being injured.

Spizarny, though, said he's been told by residents at neighborhood association meetings that some people are reluctant to report suspected illegal activity in their neighborhoods because they're afraid the person they're reporting will learn their identity and seek revenge.

'Shadow of Secrecy'

That decades of open access to police communications will soon be met with radio silence comes as a disappointment to some members of the public, like Hosack, 65, who has enjoyed listening to scanner traffic for several years.

About 10 years ago, the Lake City resident started transmitting his local scanner feed to Broadcastify.com, a web- and app-based platform that broadcasts live audio of public safety radio communications.

Around the same time, he also started the Facebook page Erie County Alerts, which now has more than 9,300 followers. Hosack recently bought a new digital trunk scanner that will conform with Erie County's new radio system, but not, of course with the encrypted talk groups.

"Encrypting law enforcement communications will mask the public from seeing all the things going on around them," Hosack, a ham radio operator for 40 years, said. "And although it could help protect the police, it will cast a shadow of secrecy on them that the police do not need today."

Hosack said having access to the communications of law enforcement, firefighters and paramedics allows him to know what's going on in his community or what's happening when he's on the road and hears sirens.

"It's nice to know the things going on around you," he said. "That's why I'm going to be disappointed when they start encrypting. The public won't be able to hear that stuff anymore. I can see to some degree why they don't want the criminal elements to know that they're approaching their position. At the same time, I think they should appreciate the citizens who are listening to this stuff and who are able to report stuff back to police. It's a two-way street."

Alerting Erie, one of several other Facebook groups in Erie County dedicated to posting information from scanner traffic, has stopped accepting new members and will close down once the county's radio project is complete. The Facebook group has more than 13,000 members.

Local news media outlets also will be affected.

Scanner traffic is part of the newsroom soundtrack at the Erie Times-News. Editors and reporters monitor calls about fires, accidents and crimes. Two weeks ago, calls about the double shooting at the Sheraton Bayfront Hotel came over the air as "active shooter on the bayfront." An RV show had just begun at the Bayfront Convention Center adjacent to the shooting scene. In the future, no such calls will be heard over the airwaves.

"Some police make the argument that, well, 'We'll tell you what's happening and we'll send out a press release,'" said Melissa Melewsky, legal counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, of which the Erie Times-News is a member. "That's really not the way our system of government works. There's a right to determine what's actually happening from the public's perspective, and that's the press's role. And encryption technology can interfere with that role in a significant way and it can affect the way the public learns about, and how much the public can learn about, criminal incidents in their community."

Journalists have had access to these communications for decades and have used it responsibly, she said.

PNA recognizes the need to keep law enforcement safe and to protect personal information like the Social Security numbers and dates of birth of private citizens, she said.

"Those aren't the issues," Melewsky said. "The problem becomes over-application. Instead of having a limited discussion about those particular issues during an encrypted conversation, the entire conversation, the entire transmission is blocked. That's very different than and reaches further than what they're trying to protect. When police and radio transcriptions are blocked as a blanket matter, in total, the media can't figure out what's going on and they can't communicate it to the public."

Asked what, if any, consideration was given to the impact encryption would have on the public and the press, Grappy responded:

"I know I'm repeating myself about the request being made by law enforcement," he said. "It's a life safety issue. It's an officer safety concern."

Grappy also said that it won't be possible to remove encryption for law enforcement in the future if one or all the departments wanted to.

"The decision was made," he said. "Law enforcement spoke in one unified voice."

Erie County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper said she's a proponent of police transparency and cited her support of body cameras being worn by officers at the Erie County Prison. There are times, though, when "public safety and the safety of our first responders trumps transparency." Encrypting radio traffic of law enforcement is one of those instances, she said.

"That's the reason why we did the radio system project," she said. "We didn't do it for transparency purposes."

Erie Mayor Joe Schember said the city wants to be "open and transparent" and share information with the community, "but we have to be concerned about security."

Elsewhere

Local police departments won't be the first to go silent. The Pennsylvania State Police in 2006 encrypted its frequency when it upgraded to the platform OpenSky, a wireless communications system that has encrypted digital transmissions that scanners can neither pick up nor decode. It has been scrapped for a new P25 radio system that State Police continue to roll out across the state.

The new system is encrypted for officer safety, according to Ryan Tarkowski, communications director for the State Police.

Other agencies that use encryption in Pennsylvania are the Somerset and Westmoreland counties sheriff's offices, the Allentown police, which went this route in 2012, and, as of last year, police in Lancaster County.

Police departments in some of the nation's larger metropolitan areas — from Las Vegas to New Orleans to Nashville, Tennessee — have made or are preparing to make the switch.

The Denver Police Department in Colorado announced recently that as early as mid-April it would move to encrypted radio communications. News outlets will have access to those communications if they sign a memorandum of understanding with the city, The Denver Post reported.

The switch is being made as the department completes work on a new 911 dispatch center. Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen told The Post that the decision was made out of a desire to protect the privacy of private citizens and to keep crime suspects from listening in on police.

Pazen said the decision to give the news media access represents the "best balance of community safety and transparency," The Post reported.

In early 2018, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shielded the public from its real-time transmissions. Like Denver, media outlets had to sign agreements with the city to gain access.

Lindsay C. Blanton is the CEO and founder of Broadcastify, which bills itself as the "world's largest source of public safety, aircraft, rail, and marine radio live audio streams." Today, it provides more than 6,600 live feeds through its website and cell phone applications. It has 200,000 daily listeners.

Blanton said some police departments still believe that sharing routine radio traffic with the public is beneficial for their communities. He also understands that there are circumstances when it's not.

Encryption "makes sense" for sensitive and tactical communications of law enforcement, he said, which is why Broadcastify doesn't allow the volunteers who feed to its platform to broadcast SWAT, surveillance and detective operations.

Routine dispatching operations, though, should remain open to the public, he said.

"Ever since encryption was invented for public safety communications we've seen a number of agencies every year use the technology," he said in an email to the Erie Times-News. "The technology is a lot less expensive now than it was, but we aren't seeing a mass adoption at this time."

Melewsky, of the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, began dealing with the issue and how it affects journalists when State Police masked their communications more than a decade ago as part of the failed $800 million Pennsylvania Statewide Radio Network, a project that was beset by delays, issues of reliability and major cost overruns.

The fact the system itself didn't work the way it was supposed to is another reason why the public should be able to listen in, she said.

"The best disinfectant is sunshine," Melewsky said. "You can't have accountability if you don't have access and encryption limits access. So by definition it also limits accountability."

Erie Times-News reporter Tim Hahn contributed to this story.

©2019 Erie Times-News (Erie, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.