Brooklyn

The sound of silence: Four more Brooklyn NYPD precincts pull plug on radio frequencies in encryption effort

By Todd Maisel
Posted on September 11, 2023



A NYPD Sergeant monitors radio traffic at the scene of an off-duty officer shot on Wednesday, August, 30. (Photo by Lloyd Mitchell)

Police radios in four more Brooklyn precincts went dark on the morning of Sept. 11, as the NYPD seemingly took another step in its controversial plan to encrypt all communications from the public.

The effort began in July with four northern Brooklyn precincts going dark. The latest round of encryption enacted Monday, the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, included the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn, referred to by some as New York’s “Killing Ground” for having high crime and murder rates; the 77th and 79th Precincts, which encompass Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant; and the 73rd Precinct that include Brownsville, East Flatbush and East New York.

The NYPD shut down police radios using encryption, a radio technique that makes it impossible for scanner radios and scanner apps to listen to radio transmissions. Critics have called radio encryption “the most regressive transparency issue in the history of the state.”

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