A crackle, a chirp and the voice of a dispatcher describing an unfolding crisis in rapid-fire code. For nearly a century, New York City police have communicated about crime and catastrophe over radio broadcasts on public channels. And for journalists and the public, these dispatches have been a reliable way to get real-time knowledge of what’s happening in one of the world’s most chaotic cities.
Now the NYPD is encrypting these channels for the first time in its history – an “upgrade” expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars before it’s completed in December 2024. Over the summer, police began scrambling the channels for certain precincts, leaving anyone listening in with white noise.
The NYPD’s chief of information technology, Ruben Beltran, told the New York City council last week the move was designed to “stop giving the bad guys our game plan in terms of how we’re trying to apprehend them”. That messaging has been echoed by the New York mayor, Eric Adams, a former cop: “We can’t give a leg up to these bad guys.” Beltran also cited ambulance chasers and unauthorized interruptions as reasons to encrypt; meanwhile, some California law enforcement agencies are encrypting their broadcasts in an effort to protect victims’ and witnesses’ personal information.
But the New Yorkers who have tuned into their radio scanners for years say something important will be lost when the channels disappear – including a way to keep tabs on the NYPD, the recipient of more than 4,200 misconduct complaints this year. Here are four of their stories.
The photojournalist: ‘Cops need checks and balances’
Todd Maisel, contributing editor at amNewYork
I’ve been doing this for 40 years. When I graduated New York University, I immediately went to work as a photographer for a string of weekly newspapers in Brooklyn. That’s when I got the scanner bug. You’d hear the precinct cops talk. And I started listening, understanding and responding.
Crime was through the roof back then. You would go to seven, eight, nine shootings a day. I had people shoot at me; I had people throw things out of windows at me. I wore a bulletproof vest, which was perfectly legal in New York state.
In those years I was living in south Brooklyn when I heard a call on the scanner for an emotionally disturbed person, holed up in a house with a hostage. I got in my jalopy, an old Buick Skylark, and ran like the devil over there. The press was stuck behind yellow tape. I don’t do that. I climbed a fence and got behind the house. All of a sudden I hear a bang – he shot himself, though he survived. The cops ran in there; I came out and photographed them dragging him out.
Another call I heard was for a robbery at a liquor store: two guys with guns. Guess what, I was only a few blocks away. When I got there, all the cops were outside with their guns drawn. So I went into a store next door and hunkered down with a mirror so that I could look out the window without them seeing me. With my police radio, I could hear them say: “He’s coming out, he’s coming out.” So I jumped up and took the shot – it was one of the best pictures I ever made.
I see encryption as a betrayal. The cops have been my friends. I’ve covered for them, I’ve been out there for them, I’ve made them look good. I showed up not just at the crime scenes, but the Christmas parties.
There’s plenty of misdeeds that they do, too. We can go back to Eric Garner, where we picked up cryptic information over the police scanner and sensed something was wrong. And a reporter went out there and got the video of Garner’s killing before the police could hide it.
They’re human beings, armed with guns, with incredible power. They need checks and balances. If encryption happens, you’re not going to know what goes on at night. We can’t make decisions based just on what social media tells us. The NYPD doesn’t always tell you what happened, sometimes for hours, days, or at all. So who are they to decide what’s the news?
The nightcrawler: ‘I stay up all night listening to the scanners’
Adam Balhetchet, owner of Loudlabs NYC, an independent local news source
I’m what they call a nightcrawler, or a stringer. I stay up all night listening to the scanners for very specific things: fires, crimes and car crashes. I race over, film the scene, interview witnesses, and then sell my footage to news stations, online and print media. How newsworthy it is depends on if injuries, fatalities or something strange happens. For the past six years I’ve been doing this.
Last Saturday, I went to three collisions, some of which were fatal. I got two of the victims in stretchers being loaded into ambulances. I went to two shootings, and got one victim on tape – he survived. Running from scene to scene like that, it’s an adrenaline rush.
Sometimes, the work is slow. I park by the water, and I just stare at the river while listening all night.
When I first moved here in 2010, I worked as an EMT. But it wasn’t paying very well, so I got into Uber driving and started filming emergencies between rides on my camcorder. If local news stations bought my video, it could be hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
It was a seven-alarm fire in 2018 that made me quit Uber and go full-time. After hearing it on the scanner, I dashed over and set up a position on a subway platform overlooking the building. I just happened to be zoomed in at a group of firefighters outside the entrance when the flames exploded toward them. I felt this huge heat wave on my face and thought there was going to be 10 firefighters dead after that. Thankfully, they only suffered minor injuries. It was probably the best shot I’ve ever had, and it made me a few thousand dollars.
The NYPD started encrypting four of the Brooklyn precinct channels in July, and on 9/11, they encrypted four more. Getting the information from other sources slows our response time, so by the time we arrive, the victim, suspects and witnesses might not even be there any more. The TV stations don’t want to just see some cops standing around with crime scene tape.
I’ve started preparing myself for encryption. I’d like to work at a news station, but I might also film weddings, real estate or business videos, which might be more profitable and a little less dangerous. I’m also 38 now. I have a wife and I got a one-year-old. I can’t be a stringer for ever. I’d love to live a normal daytime life again.
The police reporter: ‘You could hear the urgency in the dispatcher’s voice’
David Ng, former New York Post reporter and current managing editor of the Richmond-Times Dispatch
I was a police reporter in the mid-1980s at the New York Post. I had a little office on the second floor of One Police Plaza, and part of my job was to listen to the police monitors. It’s been 30 years since I’ve done that job, but I’ll never forget: 10-13 means a police officer needs assistance. And 10-90x is “unfounded”, which essentially means false alarm.
We had them on all day, like background music. But then you’d hear someone say 10-13, and you’d listen very intently and hope you pick up a location. It wasn’t just numbers, though. Sometimes, you might hear a 10-13, and there was something else to the dispatcher’s voice, like a certain urgency, where you could tell that the officer was in real bad shape. The one I’ll never forget is when the dispatcher started calling out for people to donate blood. That sent a chill.
Back then, there was a certain camaraderie between being a journalist and being a cop, a sort of blue-collar honor. I had a little pamphlet of phone numbers they gave us, where you could look up who the commanding officer was by precinct. I’d just make a cold call – “Hi, this is David Ng from the New York Post” – and whatever it was, they’d talk to you.
Today there’s definitely more friction. But the world is also a scarier place – there was no 9/11 back then. I don’t know all the ins and outs of encryption, but I don’t subscribe to the notion that they’re just trying to hide things from the public; the bad guys are getting smarter too.
The hobbyist: ‘We want situational awareness for our piece of the world’
Charles Hargrove, president of the NYC Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Service
It started in the 1970s, when I came into the eighth grade and my parents bought me a pocket AM radio. I started listening to everything.
There was one police dispatcher who I loved hearing on air; his name was John. Nice, friendly deep voice, probably Irish. If an officer had to go somewhere and couldn’t find the place, he’d say, “It’s between this street and this street; look for the blue house across from the fire hydrant.” The final night before he retired, everyone left well-wishes on the radio for him.
I prefer to listen from a distance. People like me, we listen because we want to know what’s going on around us. It’s not about whether an officer has a cup of soup for lunch. What’s going on with all the sirens? What about the gunshots? It’s situational awareness for our piece of the world.
Ham radios work even when cell towers or the internet is down. I’m part of an amateur radio group that helps out during emergencies. After 9/11, we were given assignments to help facilitate communications for the Red Cross and the city. When Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York, we tweeted out real-time information as we heard it on the scanners – like when the NYPD radioed that their 60th precinct in Coney Island was hit so hard by flooding that officers had to walk out linking arms to avoid getting swept away. After that, the Federal Emergency Management Agency named us as one of seven sites to follow in New York City.
When we hear that the police want to scramble the channels, it’s frustrating. If the government doesn’t trust the average person enough to keep them in the loop, then why should the average person trust them? If we’re going to help each other, we have to be on the same page. It’s an arrogant approach: “We’re the government, you’re the peons.” Little old me isn’t going to screw over the police.
I’m 64 now. When I retire, I’m thinking of moving to the north-east corner of Tennessee. The elevation is higher there; I can set up my solar panels and my radios, like a watchtower. At that height, without the canyons of buildings and all the interference from modern devices, there’ll be less electrical noise. I’ll be able to hear farther and clearer. Hopefully, kind of like what it sounded like in the 1970s.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity
