Sheriff, as a citizen of Tulare County I am respectfully asking that you do not enable encryption on ALL of your radio channels.
As a child born in the 60’s I can remember when I was young and my mother owned a short-wave radio. One thing I liked about it was that I was able to tune in to the local police department. When I was a little older she bought a real police scanner from Radio Shack. One with the orange flashing lights across the front. One summer night there was a pursuit. I could hear the police sirens out the window as I could hear the officers talking on the radio. There was a crash, there were shots fired. I could hear the shots outside as I heard the officers telling the dispatcher that they were ok. When I turned 14 mom bought me a handheld scanner, that was it, I was hooked. These radio transmissions shaped my life. I decided to go into Law Enforcement and ended up with a career of well over 30 years. A career that I loved, a career that was started because I could hear what my local law enforcement agency was doing.
When Visalia PD went encrypted, I told people “Sheriff Boudreaux would never do that, he would never alienate the citizens of Tulare County that way” I guess I was wrong. A Sheriff who has been so progressive, one who has been so open with his actions, always in the media, always sharing, now locking his citizens out of their ability to hear what their Sheriff’s Department is doing.
You may know that in 2023 Senator Becker introduced a law to stop Law Enforcement from encrypting their radio traffic. While this amendment did not pass it does show that there are lawmakers who feel encryption infringes on the public’s right to know.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB719
The public’s right to know the very basis for the California Privacy Rights Act, unfortunately is too old to have included radio transmissions, but as you know it makes many documents and informational sources available to the public, because the public has a right to know. This even includes dispatch information.
There is no legal requirement to encrypt police radio channels, only the only mandate is to “safeguard personal data” which you have been doing for many years. You have had the ability to encrypt since the early 80’s. Your SWAT and Narcotics channels have been encrypted for well over 30 years. You have had computers in the patrol cars for well over 20 years, computers that can and do receive information that the public should not know.
Even the largest Law Enforcement agencies in California are not encrypted. CHP, LAPD, LA County Sheriff, the list goes on. Our neighbors, Kings, Kern and Fresno counties are also not encrypted. There are many, many more non-encrypted agencies than encrypted ones.
In closing, I ask a citizen of Tulare County, I respectfully ask, do not encrypt your two primary dispatch channels. Go ahead and encrypt your alternate channels. But leave primary dispatch channels to your voting public, to the citizens of Tulare County, so that we can continue to hear the amazing job that our local law enforcement is doing. Do not break the trust between your agency and the Citizens of Tulare County.
Frank Scanlan – Porterville.