Warren County's communication center is adding a new radio channel that can only be accessible to county law enforcement and not the public. Vote in our POLL.
View full size
Warren County's communication center is adding a new police radio channel that will be accessible only to county law enforcement agencies. The channel will be encrypted and will allow law enforcement to speak privately county-wide.
New Jersey students listening to police scanners texted their parents details of what they believed was unfolding: An unidentified man was outside the school with an AK-47, location unknown.
Descriptions of the man, his possible location and other reports over the police scanner triggered rumors throughout the day. The March 2012 incident put several Hackettstown schools on lockdown, and frustrated parents arrived at schools, wanting to take their children home.
The reports were unfounded and no arrests have been made, but Hackettstown police Sgt. Darren Tynan said that the hindrance created by those following scanner reports proved the value of a private police radio channel.
“With the amount of scanners that are out there, everyone knows where we are,” he said. “With all those people listening, things can get misconstrued.”
Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Bill Hunt said the channel hasn't yet been made available to all police departments in Warren County, and that he's unsure when the channel will go live countywide. Tynan said the channel has been made available to Hackettstown police.
Hunt said officers will be able to switch to the channel when discussing particularly sensitive issues, such as hostage situations or those that would involve SWAT teams.“So that if the bad guy has a scanner, he won’t be able to know what we’re doing,” Hunt said.
The channel is intended for occasional use, and most radio chatter will remain public through the county communications center. Hunt said he doesn’t anticipate that all county radios will ever go to encrypted channels.
Some police departments outside the county use only encrypted channels.
The Allentown Police Department in August went off-line for all scanner listeners without access to the encryption key. Officials at the time explained that the decision was a matter of public safety and keeping criminals from knowing the whereabouts of police.
Clinton police Chief Brett Matheis said Hunterdon County doesn’t have an encrypted police channel, but that officers have other means of not “broadcasting to the world,” such as cellphones. He said that private channels can prevent giving criminals a running start.
“If you’re doing something, trying to catch
someone doing something, you don’t want to advertise that you’re coming,” Matheis
said.
Criminals aren’t alone in listening to scanners to
monitor police activity.
“Unfortunately, the press wants the story right away, and sometimes it’s important for our investigators to be there, and be there alone,” he said. “I’m a person that believes that the press has the right to know. It’s just a matter of finding the middle ground.”