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More than two months after the city removed first responder radio traffic from public radio waves, the city administration is still deciding whether to restore access to communications that Honolulu police officials argue must be concealed to help preserve public security and safety.
The public and news media’s longstanding ability to listen to the dispatch radio communications of publicly funded fire, police and emergency medical services ended Feb. 15 when the last phase of a $15 million conversion from the city’s analog system to a P25 Motorola digital system was completed.
The decision to upgrade the radios and encrypt real-time first responder radio traffic was made during former Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration.
Warren Izumigawa, supervisor of the Honolulu Police Department’s Telecommunications Systems Section, told the Honolulu Police Commission last week that HPD was the last government entity in Hawaii to complete the P25 conversion, part of a decades-long movement to upgrade law enforcement, military, fire, emergency medical services and other government communication systems nationwide.
The P25 radios provide police and first responders the ability to freely communicate and transmit sensitive data among county, state and federal departments and agencies, and have given police officers “an incredible increase in (geographical) coverage compared to our older system,” Izumigawa said Wednesday.
From 1990 to now, the majority of public safety agencies in the U.S. that have implemented radio system upgrades have gone to P25 and encrypted their systems, Izumigawa said. Most of the 16 radio towers that manage the city’s system have been replaced with P25 “repeater sites” that manage the dual band 700/800 MHz, digital voice radio.
He cited communications, operational and information security and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 as reasons HPD opposes restoring the public and media’s access to dispatch radio traffic that they have had access to since at least the 1930s. The public has never been able to legally listen to tactical channels used by first responders during emergencies and ongoing, real-time operations, searches and investigations.
“Primarily (the U.S. Department of Justice’s) CJIS, Criminal Justice Information System compliance … it defines where end-to-end communication … the system needs to be encrypted or secured … the information is secure at all times. … That is something that we cannot compromise,” Izumigawa said in response to a question from Police Commission Chair Shannon Alivado about the possibility of restoring the access news agencies and the public had prior to the conversion. “At the end of the day … it’s all about the safety. Everybody goes home at the end of the day, back to their family and loved ones. We need to secure our communications to ensure that everybody goes home at the end of the day.”
HPD also cited FCC Rule Title 47, the requirement to protect criminal justice and personal protected information, and the need to adhere to state law protecting juvenile information.
Police Commissioner Kenneth Silva, a retired Honolulu fire chief, replied that he “just wanted to make sure that HPD is trying to address the concerns that we’ve heard in the past and that we will get an update on whatever compromise or whatever work-through … that it’s not going to be left as is.”
Interim Police Chief Rade Vanic told Silva and the commission that the department is still working on its media notification system in the absence of access to radio transmissions. He said HPD is working on making the Computer Aided Dispatch System’s 24-hour tally of calls for service available to the public and the media via the department’s website.
The dispatch system assigns an eight-digit number to each call for police service that officers respond to.
“We are still working on it,” Vanic said. “We want to make sure … the information we provide is enough to provide the public with information, but not so much that it puts not only our officers but even the public at risk and also release information that should, quite frankly, be protected. That’s something that we are continuing to work on, and I’m hoping in the near future we’re able to get the technology squared away and make it available.”
COMMISSIONER Ann Botticelli, a retired communications executive and former news reporter, asked Vanic if the media and police are working together to improve the notifications.
HPD currently uses a spreadsheet that is updated for some but not all major incidents. In April, the number of daily notifications ranged from one to eight per day. On Wednesday, the spreadsheet listed one incident, a water main break.
The spreadsheet is supposed to include incidents of murder, robbery, terroristic threatening, assault and kidnapping, and information about missing persons, fires, gas leaks and water main breaks, according to police.
Botticelli asked, “The media right now, you guys are still working with each other and collaborating on what kind of information the media needs?”
“Based on the information that I have received our notification process has improved quite tremendously since when we first started about two months ago,” Vanic replied. “Obviously, it’s still a work in progress. There are agencies that switched over to P25 for almost a year now, whereas we’ve only switched over for the past couple months. I’m hopeful and confident that we will be able to continue to provide the media with the information that they need and definitely improve our notifications to them.”
HPD is working on a more comprehensive printout for the general public at no cost that would require no special equipment, according to police.
“HPD remains opposed to having public access to the city’s first responder radio system or making the encryption key or radios available to the media,” HPD spokesperson Michelle Yu told the Star-Advertiser in a statement. “Doing so would compromise the security of the system and violate privacy and security laws. It could also potentially compromise public and officer safety.”
IN MARCH, Mayor Rick Blangiardi told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser he would review a 2018 agreement between the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Las Vegas media outlets and was “very interested” in executing a similar agreement with Honolulu media.
The Star-Advertiser that month sent copies of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department contract to Blangiardi, the Honolulu City Council, the Honolulu Fire Department, HPD and city Emergency Services Department.
The agreement allows news agencies to pay for their own Motorola P25 radios, which cost up to $10,000 per unit. News organizations agreed not to alter the equipment or use them in any way other than to monitor the channels approved and programmed by LVMPD.
POLICE INSPECT the scanners to ensure compliance with the agreement.
“I understand the need to have access — we are looking at that. I would like to get to a place where we don’t close out the news media,” Blangiardi told the Star- Advertiser in March. “I take this very seriously. I have always been a strong advocate, on a personal level, for transparency in leadership.”
On Friday, Blangiardi’s deputy communications director, Ian Scheuring, told the Star-Advertiser that the city “has not yet taken a position on this matter, and as the policy discussions are ongoing, will refrain from commenting further at this time.”
Also in March, City Council Chair Tommy Waters introduced a resolution urging the city administration to restore public access to police, fire and emergency services radio traffic.
The resolution noted that, “Historically, such dispatch radio communications were on open and unencrypted channels that could be accessed by the media and the public.”
“The media have relied on their ability to monitor radio communications to disseminate emergency-related information to the general public, and a segment of the public has monitored dispatch radio communications as a means of keeping abreast of events occurring within the community,” read the resolution.
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