I'm in a mostly rural county. The attitude seems to have changed in the last few years. Intentional interference/"I just wanna help" and privacy is pushing this. CCR's and social media isn't helping.
Fire seems to be on the fence. Some are all for it, some aren't 100% sure.
Law enforcement is pushing for mostly encrypted.
It's not up to me, I do what they ask. But for smaller agencies that only have one channel, there are not a lot of options. DOJ/FBI rules are there, and there isn't always a good alternative.
As for scanner listeners helping, that is a reality, but there are often better ways to reach a wider slice of the population with much better information. Some larger departments choose to do that as they can get photos, videos and information that is more easily understood by the general public disseminated via social media and other means.
Relying on a random citizen listening/understanding the scanner as a means of getting accurate information out to the public isn't a reliable solution.
I went ahead and asked some sources and the reply was El Paso has a decent law enforcement division in their fire dept which is under the fire dept.
Operations may be conducted over primary fire talk groups and tac groups or traffic from the El Paso city fire Marshall office. They are dual certified in Texas and some in new Mexico for state line operations. They posses fire, ems credentials as well as law enforcement duties for fire investigations and property protection of epfd and some have sar credentials as well.
Add in the current border world issues going on impacting them locally there security is a issue as well as theft of epfd assets and properties. Names dobs maybe ran over primary from fire LE marshalls including the normal fire paging traffic end traffic.
To solve some issues it was all strapped.
El paso police will be joining it as epso has been for some time which was told when they were analog vhf a few of us I recall told people back in 2007 they all were going secure. Once epso did most said we were full of it.
Skip forward where majority are running apx8000s now in the entire county interop is not a issue anymore. Others who will be going dark is horizon, Socorro and the vfds as well as county fire soon.
Agencies whom may need access on state line should feel free to contact them and pay the subscriber fees to access what they need. If not they are capable of using the vhf and 7/800 interops.
It should also be noted cbp has access and uses apx series all banders. Texas dps in El Paso also are carrying apx8000s with access and are using encrypted talkgroups on epso aside from their conventional p25 state setup.
At the moment the main dispatch PD are open but the impacts are going dark this week. Then otap otar will be done following for the main talk groups.
