More Twin Cities law enforcement locking down police radio traffic, stirring debate

For years, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher advised his deputies to monitor the social media pages of devout police radio listeners for details on unfolding Minneapolis incidents in case a fleeing suspect fled east into his territory. Watching their real-time updates, he said, was easier than toggling to the scanner channels of a different jurisdiction on top of the six under his charge.

When Minneapolis encrypted its police radio traffic in May — preventing the public from listening in on radio traffic between officers and emergency dispatch — that resource largely went away.

“That’s been a big loss for us,” said Fletcher, a vocal opponent of encryption. “We used to have timely information.”

About four months have passed since Minneapolis encrypted its police scanners. The changeover comes amid a surge in police departments nationwide that have made the same shift.

Departments that encrypt say they are trying to abide by federal requirements that prohibit publicly airing some information, and to ensure officers’ safety in situations where a suspect might be listening to the scanners.

Opponents, however, argue that it damages transparency and police accountability at a time when those issues remain under intense scrutiny following the murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

On Aug. 27, when Robin Westman attacked Annunciation Church, killing two children and injuring 21 other people in Minneapolis, encryption reduced what could be heard. Rick Abbott, the founder of the popular MN Crime Watch page on social media, said scanner traffic that morning gave “limited, fragmented details,” whereas in past cases, his page would have been able to provide a fuller account of the shooting more quickly.

This fall, St. Paul police will begin encrypting as well. Assistant Chief of Police Paul Ford said the department needs to encrypt to comply with the federal rules for radio traffic. It’s also to protect witness and victim information, he said.

“When you have the open airways and people are giving names and dates of birth and talking about violent and horrific crimes and really bad things that happen to people ... now you’re associating [that information] with a name of a victim or witnesses,” Ford said.

In Minneapolis, staff created a public 911 Emergency Incidents Dashboard to replace the information from scanners. It maps out where police are responding, the response time and block location, type of call, and how many squad cars are there. However, the dashboard doesn’t allow the data to be downloaded or even copied by users.

Minneapolis Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette said in a statement that encryption prevents the circulation of unverified early information on calls that is sometimes inaccurate.

“We will continue to keep the public informed about law enforcement activity … through our public channels and responsiveness to data requests,” Barnette said.

“Any time that you’re reducing a transparency function in a place where there is not a high degree of trust between certain communities and the police, on the back of getting rid of the federal consent decree ... I think that it would make any community that’s sort of reeling worried about, ‘What is this police department going to do?’” he said.

Steve Devine, chief technology officer for the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, noted some examples of scanner information that should not be aired publicly: dates of birth, Social Security numbers, medical information and conviction/arrest history.

Devine said that encryption is “necessary for agencies to operate securely.”

Some Twin Cities residents said they feel left in the dark since encryption took place in Minneapolis and other cities.

Lynne Crockett regularly listened to the scanner to know what crimes were going on in her north Minneapolis neighborhood.

“It’s been a bit frustrating,” Crockett said. “When I could listen to the scanner, I knew whether or not it was something that was a big deal. Now I just hear a lot of sirens. To be honest, I’ve noticed more sirens than I was hearing before [encryption].”

Minneapolis’ encryption has also affected hugely popular social media pages such as Crime Watch and MN Crime, and their hundreds of thousands of followers.

Abbott, owner of MN Crime, said he thinks the new dashboard is “incredibly insufficient” compared to scanner audio, and that at times he’s seen errors on the dashboard.

Catherine Cowley listens to scanners and posts as a volunteer on the MN Crime Watchers group, which is associated with the page MN Crime. She said that about a day after Minneapolis encrypted, she saw city residents posting questions and observations about a particular shooting. Without the scanner, she and her fellow scanner listeners couldn’t provide real-time information.

“We saw no communication given to the public from MPD during or after this incident,” Cowley said. “What location? Does a threat exist? Is it over? Did you catch them? We never found out.”

Beth Pulkrabek, a resident of Hutchinson, Minn., said she agrees with encryption. She said she worried about scanner listeners swarming a crime scene, impeding police.

“I don’t want people inhibiting somebody trying to go save my mom and dad,” she said.

While more Minnesota law enforcement agencies support encryption, Fletcher is pushing back. He said that transparency is particularly important in law enforcement because each department has a monopoly on the service it provides, unlike in other fields. He argues there are alternatives to encryption, such as using electronic messages or a private channel to exchange restricted information.

“The citizens deserve to know what’s going on. That’s number one,” Fletcher said. “But they also deserve to know how fast the police are responding. That whole issue of monitoring police activity is more important than most activities.”

The sheriff added that he hasn’t seen evidence to support the argument that suspects might be listening to the scanner.

Non-encrypted radio has also helped law enforcement in some situations, according to Ramsey County deputy Patrick Scott.

Several months ago, a scanner listener helped Scott apprehend a murder suspect in St. Paul, he said. The caller said he saw someone who matched the description on the scanner.

“I was fairly close by, and spotted the kid walking down the street, and we got him into custody, recovered the gun, and he got charged with murder,” Scott said.

In St. Paul, Ford said rioters used scanner information following Floyd’s murder.

“A lot of the violent protesters, they were listening to our radios, and they were operating and changing their tactics based on what we were doing,” Ford said.

Megan Larson, a spokeswoman for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, also explained that it “isn’t as easy as, ‘Change to channel 2.’” And the city of Minneapolis does not have “the personnel or the technology” for a different solution such as delaying public scanner audio or redacting private information in real time, a statement from the city said.

Just before Minneapolis police began encryption, MPD spokesman Sgt. Garrett Parten pointed to a case in July 2023 when a listener following the manhunt for a murder suspect beat officers to the suspect’s location and began livestreaming before officers could get there, tipping off the suspect.

The state sent out a document about a year ago explaining that agencies must at least have a plan for encrypting private information, and that full encryption is not required.

T. John Cunningham, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said in a statement that decisions about encryption are made by local law enforcement agencies.

Ramsey County’s emergency communications center is also planning to encrypt both of its data channels, which affects the rest of the county along with St. Paul. There are no plans to encrypt the county’s main channels, according to the center director.

“Our reasons for encryption have not changed since May, and those reasons are the same as many other jurisdictions across the state and other major cities undertaking major community safety and police reform,” he said.