Yes, still in the open for now. But make NO mistake Sheriff Henderson is actively pushing for encryption...per his own public statements and county commissioner minutes.
I truly wonder what his defense would be. The ambush of an officer argument seems ridiculous, as those are random for the most part. I also wonder how he would justify the need for our county to encrypt when HPD already has their dispatch channels in the clear, and how Harris County SO and Constables all have the majority of their channels open. I also wonder if any of the municipal police departments approve of the decision since they are basically endorsing it as they use MCSO dispatch. They have much higher crime rates than our county does. From what I can tell the City of Conroe has the highest crime rate in our county and yet they are the only ones in our county who are fully encrypted.
One thing I noticed is when he talked about encryption in a November 2019 meeting, he seemed to get a bit more emotional when compared to the rest of the things he was talking about. He seemed as if he was frustrated and annoyed. There really must be something bothering him that he hasn't mentioned yet.
I spoke with Scott Engle a few weeks ago and he told me that he isn't even getting access. No media agencies will be given access no matter their size. There have been a few shootings lately, and it takes many hours for an official press release to be generated. I wonder if each supervisor on duty will be using Twitter to publish alerts such as manhunts, Harris County does this. There was a manhunt here in The Woodlands a few months ago and MCSO didn't publish an alert or press release at all. People were on Facebook posting about all the helicopters in the area, turns out an armed individual had fled into the woods in a residential area. Had it not been for sites like MCPR, no one would have a clue as to what was going on.
