Duluth PD Encrypted Channel

A Duluth squad will tell another squad to meet me on admit. Or maybe it's admin. I believe this is TG 37604. My question is, why do cops use this channel? What is so secretive that they have to use the encrypted channel? What do they talk about that they don't want other people to hear? I guess we'll never know because we can't hear it. Thanks, Michael

They don't want any one to listen in on what they say, that TG 37604 must be the one they (encrypted )
so NO one will hear.

Police depts are not stupid, they know there are scanners that decode P25 systems widely available now. In the early days those scanners did not exist or when they started being made they were expensive. Public safety thought their communications could not be monitored. Then P25 scanners became widely available and then their communications were being streamed on the internet so the need for encryption became popular. If they want to talk securely then they will. Remember even though the radio system maybe paid for by tax dollars, that does not give the public the right to be able to monitor all their activities as some people believe. Does it contribute to police misconduct, no.

No doubt encryption sucks big time, best thing you can do is make your opinion made available to people in charge of the various departments that encrypt even their dispatch TG's, hell even animal control TG's being encoded. It's my belief that TAC, UC details, and other sensitive stuff should be encrypted. The smart listener usually can figure out what is maybe going on by monitoring other traffic that is in the clear. When I worked in TV news, when the PD was being very sneaky and quiet, I would go to the fire or EMS channels and they would talk about the incident in great detail.

What jwilson said. AND that many calls to change channels are not so much because of what they don't want you to hear, but moreso about not tying up the air with chit-chat that only two people may be concerned with. Nothing worse then trying to dispatch calls for service when two or more officers are tying up the channel chatting about matters that only pertain to themselves.

JoeyC said:

What jwilson said. AND that many calls to change channels are not so much because of what they don't want you to hear, but moreso about not tying up the air with chit-chat that only two people may be concerned with. Nothing worse then trying to dispatch calls for service when two or more officers are tying up the channel chatting about matters that only pertain to themselves.

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Excellent point!, when I rode with a Hennepin County Sheriff's deputy one night, he was using his cellphone and MDC quite a bit and not the car-car talkgroups to BS will fellow deputies, he hardly used the radio.

Hey how about this. You install a sophisticated direction finding antenna on your roof. The antenna has an inline filter to increase it's range in only the public safety bands. You then tie it to a computer program that can map the transmissions directions in your locality. That away anytime a bunch of units arrive at any one destination you know somethings up and you send out a news crew.Hell we could even stream these locations over the net. Secondly you can thank your lucky stars only a few channels are encrypted there. Our narcotics channel has been encrypted over half the time since 1988. The control freaks really got their wish here in the Fall of 2012 when all law enforcement went 100 percent encrypted. Being monitored is a nuisance to some and a source of paranoia to others. And as of now it's real cheap to shut us out.