Jeffco Sheriff's Office just encrypted their scanner feed

This has been rumored to be in the works ever since the Denver Police Department encrypted their scanner communications but nothing official was ever discussed. Today, logging into Broadcastify, this message now appears for the description:
What this means is that, at the moment, we can still hear dispatch, area fire departments, and CSP; we can no longer hear Jeffco deputies responding to calls. The worry is that this is going to become a new trend, as the Denver Fire Department and Douglas County Sheriff have encrypted theirs as well, and and the Arapahoe Sheriff's Office plans to.

The person who hosts the online scanner feed for Mountain Area Jeffco has long threatened to discontinue his feed should JCSO ever encrypt their communications. It remains to be seen if he will follow through on this, and I sincerely hope he doesn't, as we would lose a valuable means of keeping abreast of other emergencies that affect us all. We in the mountains/wildland urban interface are in the highest-risk area in the country for wildfires, we depend on that scanner traffic as our first alerts that we need to be aware, informed, and start taking action to prepare to evacuate if need be for any given incident. We aren't metro Denver where a building fire will be seen by many and controlled quickly by agencies that can respond within minutes versus having to hike into remote wilderness like the fires near Bailey this past summer/fall that, had we had worse weather conditions, could've spread far and fast.

And while I can see their point that criminals can use the broadcasted information to their benefit (e.g. flee when they know LE are en route), I have yet to see hard evidence that this is a significant problem, and they can, and have, used cell phones and other hidden communication channels for active situations or information too sensitive to share publicly. For the most part, those who listen to the scanner (yours truly included) have not shared personal identifiable information heard on the scanner. We report incidents with enough details to let folks know to make an informed decision to take another route, or be alert to a fire, or potential suspect in their area, but without compromising the privacy of those involved, or the safety of the officers and fire personnel on scene - their safety is just as important as those of our community members.

No, I am not advocating for them opening up any communication that puts their personnel or the public at risk in any way, shape, or form.

In my view, for the health of our democracy, it is a troubling direction. We the public lose out if we can't hear what our police and fire departments are doing, and our news media can't provide oversight into what's going on. Already there have been some incidents that Denver news media has pointed to of unreported crimes that they only learned of thanks to an eventual press release or citizens videoing it themselves with their phones and sending it to news stations. Depending on those agencies to release their own info means not knowing of potential threats to community safety in a timely manner and leaving that power of oversight more in their control (not completely, as there is still internal investigation and District Attorney oversight).

Our government works for us, and transparency is the best way to ensure our rights are not infringed. On the whole, it is rare that we need to exercise such oversight, but it remains essential that we do so. There is a fine line to balance of open communication and keeping the public informed while maintaining privacy for persons involved in emergencies or alleged crimes and the safety of our first responders, but we cannot accept the extreme of either side as the right solution.

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert. ~J. Robert Oppenheimer

All that said, I don't hold much hope that this decision will revert so this is the new status quo. I would like to find out what the Sheriff's Office has in mind for how they plan to keep the community informed of incidents so we can all make time-critical decisions for our safety and that of our loved ones, property, and homes. I firmly believe that more communication, not less, is always for the best for our community and respectfully request that they keep the lines of communication open for the good of the public and first responders alike.

Homeagain, I 100% agree that everyone is responsible for themselves and must be proactive in taking actions to ensure their own safety and that of their family; however, it is a lot tougher to make those decisions when lacking information, and that's the point of my original post.

During the beginning of the Lower North Fork Fire, we were hearing the firefighters on scene and in command of the incident over the scanner talking about evacuations. We were the first to post that information on our site, with the caveat that it wasn't officially sent yet over the emergency alert system, but that is what the firefighters were saying needed to be done and we wanted everyone to be as informed as possible so they could decide to go ahead and go before receiving a call if they felt it necessary. I personally was contacting friends I knew who lived in the area and telling them to get out. Tragically, what wasn't known at the time (and has since been largely addressed) was that the firefighters were having huge communication issues with the police departments and vice versa (incompatible radio equipment) and that the previous emergency alert system software the Sheriff's Office was using had huge flaws and not everyone got a call who should have. We lost three community members who didn't evacuate in time, all of whom had been calling 911 and asking what was happening with the increasing smoke they were seeing and if they should evacuate - they were told repeatedly that it was a controlled burn and not to call back.

If we hadn't been able to hear what was being said over the scanner, we would never have known to post that earlier warning, giving people a crucial hour to save themselves, and with as fast as the fire was racing, minutes were all they had. One friend saw similar information on Pinecam and she and her family barely made it out in time - her video of them driving through the fire was replayed nationally over media sites.


This site was started because people were being banned from PC, and back then once you were banned, you couldn't see links or other crucial info that was posted on their site because they had it more locked down than they do now (they changed their policy of restricting what was shown publicly in posts in direct response to our site existing and making that information freely available to non-members because it was imperative to the original owners, and then myself, that safety comes first and no one should have to spend time logging in to get the info they need to stay safe in an emergency). PC became the huge site it was because of the High Meadow Fire, and then Hayman Fire, and it being the only source where people could find out the latest scanner information so they knew if they needed to prepare to evacuate.

More, not less, communication saves lives. Our community websites have a long history of being those sources of reliable, timely, critical information - long before emergency alerts are sent out, and long before Denver media makes it up the hill to see what's bleeding or burning. And while the advent of online scanners has made it so anyone can listen and it's not just here that you can find out what's going on, many don't listen to the scanner themselves day in and day out because it's distracting and unpleasant (sometimes tragic and devastating) to do so. They rely on others, like MMT, to alert them to when it's important to pay attention, which we've done with pride and dedication because it's our mission to serve our community.

While we can still hear CSP and the fire departments, we're now missing a big chunk of that which JCSO responds. I haven't crunched the data so this is anecdotal, but I am confident from my own observations that when we are actively listening to the scanner, we invariably post more quickly than CDOT and Jeffco Sheriff, and we post incidents that they never mention on their social media accounts but which we have been told is where we should go to find out what's happening. We post those day-to-day small accidents, and smaller fires, that impact people's commutes and homes but aren't big enough to warrant highway closures or CodeRED alerts; incidents which we now cannot hear and share.

It all comes down to the fact that we can't as effectively do our job, and fulfill our mission of keeping everyone as informed and safe as possible, if we can't hear calls on incidents. That is unacceptable to me so I'm not done speaking out on this because my first priority is to the community we serve. Disappointingly, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office has robbed us of an opportunity for conversation by taking this action without inviting any comment beforehand. As I said earlier, I don't advocate any extreme - either fully open or fully hidden - communications, but I think there is room for compromise somewhere in the middle that better serves the community while keeping personal information protected and our first responders safe.