After tech snafu, most East Bay police radio channels to go silent soon

The multi-million dollar effort to remove public access to police radio communications across the East Bay has a new start date, roughly a month after similar plans were undone by a technology snafu.

Every law enforcement agency in Contra Costa County — including all police departments and the county’s sheriff’s office — will end public access to their radio chatter on Oct. 7, said David Swing, head of the East Bay Regional Communications System Authority.

Nearly every such agency in Alameda County plans to follow suit on Oct. 9, he said. The only holdout appears to be the Berkeley Police Department, which vowed last month to keep their conversations public.

The move comes about a month after regional authority tried to “encrypt” — or make secret — those radio communications, only to see its plans falter within hours due to a still-unexplained technology problem. Police and sheriff’s deputies experienced “intermittent loss of radio communications” an hour or two after the switch began on Sept. 3, prompting the authority to keep radio traffic public while it sorted out the issue.

In an email, Swing said the problem was due to “a conflict between radio technologies,” but it was not an issue with any vendors or outside entities. He added that “we applied an update and tested it widely to ensure the issue was resolved.”

The encryption decision has garnered considerable blowback from police accountability organizations, First Amendment advocates and a Bay Area state senator — all of whom call it a massive blow to transparency and the public’s ability to hold officers to account when they err on the job.

For decades, the public could listen in on most communications between officers and their dispatchers — providing a real-time window into crime as it was reported, as well as how police responded. Recordings of those conversations allowed journalists and the public to instantly go back and fact-check police agencies after officer-involved shootings and other incidents.

The switch, which is years in the making, has cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

The East Bay Regional Communications System Authority spent more than $1.5 million from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2024, on an “encryption update,” according to budget documents for the agency. Numerous police agencies also said they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the encryption initiative, including $650,000 in Emeryville; $130,000 in Brentwood; $129,000 in El Cerrito and $100,000 in Martinez. It remains unclear whether those costs were in addition to those incurred by the regional communications authority.

Law enforcement officials across the region say the move is needed after a 2020 directive by the California Department of Justice ordered law enforcement agencies to work harder to protect certain private information, such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers. Still, the DOJ did not require wholesale encryption of police radio channels.

The East Bay switch garnered little attention until recently, however, as the Oakland Police Department prepared to shield its radio feed. The agency is in the unique position of operating under the oversight of a federal judge and court-appointed monitor, following numerous scandals over the past 20-plus years.

The change comes on the heels of a recent decision by the Oakland Police Commission to allow officers to initiate pursuits over 50 miles per hour at their own discretion, as long as they receive a supervisors permission for it soon afterward.

Losing the ability to listen in to police chases eliminates a layer of public accountability to ensure officers are adhering to the new policy, said Millie Cleveland of the Coalition for Police Accountability.

“Oakland has a particular problem of police misconduct,” Cleveland said. “The public having an opportunity to also be able to hear and listen to the communications that occur is key.”

“I don’t think Oakland should be considered the police department that will operate with good faith,” she added.

At least one Bay Area agency — the Palo Alto Police Department — reversed course after encrypting its channels and re-opened them public access, citing the ability to use other means to protect private information mentioned in the 2020 directive.

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.