Sheriff pulls
plug on police scanners
Staff writer
Between 8 and 11:29 a.m. Monday, all police transmissions in the county were switched from a talk group the public can hear on scanners to an encrypted talk group which scanners cannot pick up.
Officials insist the timing had nothing to do with former Police Chief Gideon Cody’s appearance in court on felony charges against him.
“The fact that it happened on the 7th of October when the clown came to the courtroom had nothing to do with it,” Hillsboro Police Chief Jessey Hiebert said.
Hiebert said Sheriff Jeff Soyez sent an email Monday morning telling law enforcement agencies to switch to talk group Law 2 because of maintenance being done on the regular talk group.
Hiebert said TBS Electronic in Topeka was working on the regular talk group which went offline and would be unreliable.
“It has to do with radio maintenance with new radios that are coming in,” Hiebert said.
Marion County ordered new radios for full-time police officers after Federal Bureau of Investigation mandated last year that certain information could not be transmitted to the public.
“I was just doing what I was told, because we needed to communicate,” Hiebert said.
Steven Grabar of TBS, who works with the county on radio communications, hotly denied that TBS was working on anything related to the switch.
“They are going over to that because of the state,” he said.
County emergency manager Marcy Hostetler said Grabar sent the county an email Friday telling them talk group Law 1 would be worked on by the state.
Marion County Sheriff’s Office had to switch to encrypted talk group Law 2, Hostetler said.
“In order to change the channel to encrypted, we had to get off of it,” Hostetler said. “We didn’t want to use the channel they were working on.”
Hostetler said the county was required to switch to encrypted dispatches by Dec. 31, but outside experts have said encryption was not required except in specific special cases.
She said work on Law 1 would be completed in about two weeks and officers would again use that talk group.
Hostetler confirmed that Soyez had sent the email to police departments.
Soyez did not return a call seeking comment.
Hostetler suggested Kansas Department of Transportation, which oversees the radio tower at Aulne used by the county, was actually the agency making changes to encrypt Law 1.
Mike Minnis, the county’s contact person there, said TBS notified KDOT at 2 p.m. Monday to change three talk groups to encrypted. Minnis said the changes were made yesterday.
Undersheriff Larry Starkey also said an email was sent by TBS saying Law 1 would be encrypted when the state was done working on it.
“We decided to start it yesterday,” Starkey said. “When they are done with it, Steven Graber will send us a notification and then we’ll be back on it.”
The newspaper’s police scanners recorded more than 70 crystal-clear transmissions on the main law enforcement talk group between midnight and 8:51 a.m. Monday and then again at 11:28 a.m.
In each case, calls among officers and dispatchers were heard and promptly were answered. No calls was garbled or had to be repeated. There were no complaints about radios not working, and all routine calls checking in on officers or reporting when they came on or off duty were logged as usual.
The digital talk groups that the sheriff’s office ordered converted to encryption are not separate frequencies or channels. They use the exact same frequencies and equipment as all other talk groups, including the talk group that officers were ordered to switch to instead.
The only difference is that the already was encrypted to prevent monitoring by journalists, firefighters, medics, and citizens who listen to police transmissions at home.
It was the only encrypted talk group among 47 registered to the county. At least half a dozen of these unencrypted talk groups appear on every radio used by law enforcement and emergency workers.