OPD’s decision to encrypt its radio feed takes away a crucial reporting tool

For decades, the Oakland Police Department’s radio communications were open for anyone to listen to.

All that was required was a piece of off-the-shelf radio equipment, a scanner. And for years, the popular website Broadcastify.com livestreamed OPD’s radio transmissions (and hundreds of other public safety agency feeds), and offered an archive of recordings.

Tuning in, the public could listen in real time as officers and dispatchers handled welfare checks, shootings, car crashes, missing persons, downed power lines, robberies — any incident called into 911.

Listening to police scanners has been a staple of newsroom activity since police radios were invented. Reporters tune in to get a sense of how their city’s police department is operating or to cover emergencies like fires, earthquakes, or mass shootings and major events like protests and parades.

That’s why many journalists are concerned about OPD’s decision to encrypt its radio communications. 

As of 4 a.m. this morning, the department’s radio feed was scheduled to be hidden from the public. It went down briefly today, but then was publicly available again this afternoon. The problem is an unexpected technical issue, OPD told The Oaklandside in an emailed statement. But the department is still working toward fully encrypting its radios.

Why is OPD encrypting its radios?

In 2020, Xavier Becerra, then California’s attorney general, issued a memo to police departments telling them they needed to take steps to make sure that sensitive information drawn from law enforcement databases, as well as personal information about crime victims, suspects, and others, wasn’t broadcast over police radios.

Some departments like the California Highway Patrol and Palo Alto police responded by keeping their dispatch and patrol channels open to the public while directing officers to use special encrypted channels, or cell phones, to relay sensitive information.

Other departments like San Jose and agencies in Contra Costa County decided to encrypt everything. OPD is joining them. 

When The Oaklandside first asked OPD about its plans to encrypt its radio systems in May, the department told us they’d get answers to our questions but then never followed up. And then today, the feed went silent.

In response to queries from other news organizations this week, OPD said that it is encrypting its radio communications “to protect the safety of both the community and our officers.”

“Encrypting our channels is a critical step in strengthening operational security, enhancing the safety of our first responders, and continuing to support public safety,” an OPD spokesperson wrote.

How will this impact local reporting?

Since The Oaklandside was founded five years ago, we’ve relied many times on our ability to access public safety agency radio communications, especially OPD transmissions. The scanner has helped us report on controversial police shootings, attacks on the police, protests, sideshows, burglaries, high-speed chases, and fires.

Most recently, we pulled recordings of OPD’s radio communications from the morning of June 30, 2025, to listen to how the department responded to reports of a suspicious death in Dimond Canyon. This tragic hanging death upset many in the community and raised questions about the cause of death and how law enforcement was handling the situation. Our ability to listen to OPD officers as they showed up to the scene assisted us in providing answers for the community.

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, we were in the streets reporting, but we also listened to the scanner to keep track of the marches and rallies and see how the police were responding. The scanner was a source of information about roving groups of burglary caravans that swept through the city starting that year, smashing into businesses and sometimes robbing people or engaging in shootouts. 

We used recordings of OPD and other agency radio transmissions to investigate the actions of Oakland police officers and Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies on June 1, 2020, when unconfirmed rumors of “molotov cocktails” went out over the radio, leading the police to use overwhelming force, injuring dozens of protesters and resulting in a mass arrest — an incident that resulted in discipline of over 20 officers and a rare apology from the department.

Police radio was also a key source in helping us do initial reporting on the police shooting of Erik Salgado and Brianna Colombo. Salgado was killed and Colombo wounded after Salgado tried to drive the car the two were in through a California Highway Patrol blockade. Salgado’s family sued the CHP and the agency later settled the case for $7 million.

OPD’s radio has been a key source of information when police officers have been harmed in the line of duty. In December 2023, Officer Tuan Le and other OPD officers were working undercover, trying to stop a burglary in progress, when they were shot at by fleeing suspects. We used OPD’s radio communications to learn about what happened as the officers came under fire and crashed their vehicle. OPD officers rushed Le to Highland Hospital, but he died of his injuries.

In 2021, we were alerted one October afternoon that a former OPD captain had been shot while fueling his car at a downtown gas station. The scanner was a crucial source of information as this story was breaking. Ersie Joyner, a decorated OPD officer who had recently retired, was confronted by several people who were attempting to rob him. He drew a pistol and fired, killing one of his assailants, and Joyner was shot multiple times. He later recovered from his injuries.

Whenever a big fire breaks out, our newsroom turns up the volume on the scanner feed. Last October’s Keller Fire in East Oakland was a close call. The blaze could have swept into numerous houses and easily jumped the freeway had it not been for the Oakland Fire Department’s swift response. The fire department has its own radio system, which we also monitor, but during fires, chatter on the police scanner can be critical.

OPD’s radio encryption will make it far more difficult to report stories like these in real time. Reporters will have one less tool to dissect what happened during a crisis, unfiltered by the department’s public information officers.

City Administrator Jestin Johnson told the East Bay Times this week that Oakland might release recordings of police radio transmissions, prioritizing requests from news media. But as that paper noted, the city has repeatedly failed to follow state law and make public records available. Oakland has been sued several times in recent years for failing to respond to Public Records Act requests in a timely manner or by not handing over all relevant records.