Staff Report

WARSAW — Discussions on encrypting law enforcement agencies’ police scanner channels, preventing the community from hearing a majority of calls involving police, first began over six months ago.

On April 27, the Warsaw Police Department submitted a letter to the Kosciusko County Public Safety Communications Technology Committee, requesting WPD’s channel be encrypted.

WPD cited technological advances in recent years allowing cellphone applications to access the channel as reason for making the channel encrypted, while also expressing concerns for officer safety.

Shortly after WPD’s request, the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office made a similar request for the county’s channel to be encrypted as well, citing similar reasons and noting the ability for criminals to monitor deputies’ whereabouts from a mobile app.

This change was made at no additional cost and only required a programming change to each radio in the county. This programming change was done during a scheduled firmware update in October.

Even though the technology committee encrypted law enforcement agencies’ channels, fire and EMS frequencies were not. This still allows the general public and media access to many incidents that fire and EMS personnel respond to, such as personal injury vehicle accidents and shootings.

“The sheriff’s office currently provides news agencies within the county computer access to incident reports, accident reports, jail bookings, and daily dispatch center logs,” said KCSO Public Information Officer Sgt. Doug Light, who works full-time to release information to the public on behalf of Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith.

“Additionally, the sheriff’s office is currently working with its software vendor to create a ‘citizen resource center,'” said Light. “This will easily allow the public access to a wide range of activity and calls for service logs through the sheriff’s office app and website. This will further our ability to remain transparent with the community we serve.”