The real-time communications between dispatchers and law enforcement helped determine which city blocks were too dangerous to host community events and when it was time to usher small children indoors.
“It made me feel safer,” said Crockett, a lifelong North Sider and a retired community liaison worker at Minneapolis Public Schools. “Anything I can do to stay ahead of the curve.”
But soon, the reassuring crackle of that radio will fall silent.
Minneapolis is slated to start testing new encrypted emergency dispatch channels on Monday, with an anticipated blackout on all transmissions as of May 1.
That means concerned citizens like Crockett, as well as members of the media, will no longer be able to listen in on or independently monitor police actions in Minnesota’s most populous city.
The controversial changeover comes amid a nationwide debate about how to best protect the integrity of ongoing investigations and prevent the release of confidential data, like the names and addresses of victims and witnesses, while balancing the public’s right to information.
City officials point to new state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and federal guidelines limiting what details can be aired over an open channel. Ensuring compliance, they say, requires a crackdown on authorized users. No subscription to popular online scanner platforms, such as Broadcastify or Zello, can bypass that encryption technology once deployed.
“The dramatic rise in the use of social media and scanner apps to track first responders jeopardizes emergency response operations and can lead to the spread of incomplete, inaccurate or unsubstantiated information,” a city spokesman wrote in a news release. “This can cause safety concerns for first responders and the public.”
It’s not clear what, if any, recent examples exist of disruptions to local law enforcement operations as a result of maintaining uninterrupted 911 radio traffic.
A number of smaller jurisdictions have already curtailed public access to those transmissions, including Edina, St. Louis Park, Rochester, Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport Police, and the counties of Dakota, Scott, Carver and Olmsted.
But in Minneapolis, where city leaders have faced mounting pressure to enhance police accountability in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the move raises serious concerns for First Amendment attorneys and government watchdog groups.
“This is one more way to shut off public access to what I would call kind of operational, raw data that can actually be quite revelatory as to whether a police department is doing its job properly,” said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. “We should have the right to monitor what they’re doing for ourselves.”
Minneapolis police have long used encrypted channels for sensitive investigations, or specialized units like SWAT, but not for everyday 911 calls and radio traffic. When an officer wished to convey private intel, they would often move to a restricted frequency or simply call a supervisor on their cellphone.
Withholding all dispatch communiques reverses the decadeslong practice of allowing the public to listen and react to law enforcement activity in real-time, a valuable resource for journalists and civilian scanner jockeys seeking to keep a closer eye on what’s happening in their communities.
The proliferation of mobile scanner apps made it easier to track police movements than ever before — attracting large, and often devout audiences, particularly during critical incidents like mass shootings.
Several major U.S. cities ― from San Franciscoto Denver to New York― switched to encrypted channels in recent years, citing officer safety and privacy concerns.
Top law enforcement officials, including Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, have said they worry about compromising victims’ personal information or the risk of tipping off a suspect by continuing to air uncensored tactical data over dispatch.
But critics argue that limiting the flow of information actually erodes trust in police by making it substantially harder to hold them accountable.
Last August, a coalition of Twin Cities news outlets, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, penned a letter to elected officials outlining why unfettered access to scanner audio helps better inform the public about breaking news, sometimes even preventing potential unrest or false rumors from spreading on social media.
Radio traffic provides critical insight into the circumstances of the initial emergency response, as well as what police say and observe while at the scene. It can help reveal whether a suspect is armed, fired a weapon at officers first or otherwise attacked them; and whether police attempted other means to gain compliance during an arrest, before resorting to lethal force.
Local media tried to find a compromise solution that would retain some measure of access — like in Chicago, where the police department made transmissions public after a 30-minute delay.
“It fell on deaf ears,” said Leita Walker, an attorney at Ballard Spahr LLP, who attempted to facilitate an encryption key for the mainstream press. “As a result, the media will be hamstrung in bringing important information about public safety to people in a timely manner.”
That is particularly troublesome in Minneapolis, Walker added, where the Police Department “has a history of not telling the whole truth when it comes to incidents that make them look bad.”
In 2019, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office became the first known agency in the state to adopt encryption. The decision affected 25 different suburban agencies that receive 911 dispatch service through the county.
Maj. Shane Magnuson said his deputies are better able to de-escalate or slow down volatile situations, like barricaded suspects, when their team’s movements aren’t aired publicly in real-time. It has also prevented the further release of unverified data, like potential suspect names and descriptions of individuals later determined to be innocent.
“There’s a significant chance” that information from initial 911 calls is either incorrect or incomplete, Magnuson said in an interview last summer. “Dispatchers are trying to get the best information they can with callers who are having maybe the worst day of their life and are under a ton of stress and do not have the complete picture themselves.”
Yet, longtime scanner listeners contend that they find comfort in hearing a violent crime reported and being able to track response times.
“It’s nice to hear the police doing the right thing, too. We can hear everything,” said Crockett, the north Minneapolis resident. Losing that ability to monitor their actions may unintentionally result in less faith in the institution as a whole, she noted.
“It feels more like they’re trying to hide something than they are trying to protect somebody.”
In lieu of dispatch audio, Minneapolis is launching a new 911 Emergency Incidents Dashboard aimed at keeping the public informed while mitigating privacy concerns.
The webpage, which automatically updates every 30 minutes, will list all 911 calls over the past 12 hours. Incidents are mapped by location and categorized by date, responding agency (police, fire or behavioral crisis response unit) and squad number, neighborhood or problem code.
Emergency calls more than 12 hours old will feed into a separate, archival dashboard that remains searchable to the public.
©2025 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
