BPD’s Move to Encrypted Radio Raises Transparency Concerns

When the Boulder Police Department (BPD) quietly completed its switch to fully encrypted radio channels in late October, the announcement landed with a familiar thud among Colorado journalists and transparency advocates. To the department, the change was a long-planned technical upgrade meant to prevent outages during critical incidents. However, to many in the press, it represented yet another barrier between the public and real-time information about police activity.

Public Information Officer Dionne Waugh told Yellow Scene Magazine that the department “has been working on this transition for over two years.”

The shift has reignited concerns from reporters and open-records advocates who rely on police radio traffic to understand breaking events as they unfold.

Those concerns are in part driven by the BPD’s history. The department has a documented history of transparency disputes, including Yellow Scene’s own lawsuit to secure access to body-camera footage after the city attempted to charge thousands of dollars for the footage. For many local journalists, the promise of “new tools” and dashboards doesn’t outweigh the loss of a decades-old source of real-time situational awareness.

On November 21, BPD Chief Stephen Redfearn released the department’s first formal statement about the transition. Redfearn opened by reaffirming his earlier commitment to transparency upon becoming interim chief in January 2024. He characterized the change as key to ensuring safety and reliability, saying aging equipment had raised concerns about potential failures during emergency responses.

Colorado lawmakers have debated radio encryption for years. Statewide attempts to restrict or regulate encryption, including HB18-1061 and HB19-1235, failed to pass. HB21-1250, a broader police-accountability bill, requires agencies that encrypt their communications to create a policy allowing media access to unencrypted transmissions. But the law doesn’t prescribe how that access must work, leaving departments to craft their own rules.

Across the state, encryption has become the norm. Aurora encrypted its channels in 2016 with Denver following their lead in 2019.

When the encryption went live, BPD offered encrypted radios to three Boulder news organizations. The offer came with a contract outlining rules for usage and penalties for violations, including the possibility of losing access.

The Daily Camera declined the offer. Editor John Vahlenkamp stated that the outlet does not sign agreements to gain access to public safety communications. This stance is shared by many newsrooms who are weary of how relying on police-controlled terms for access to information could unduly influence reporting.

“These radios are tools that news organizations have used for many, many decades to find out, in real time, what is going on with police in their communities,” said Jeffrey A. Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Encrypted radios controlled by police agreements, he warned, risk giving departments the power to decide which reporters get the full picture.

Without real-time updates, breaking-news coverage of major incidents — traffic fatalities, fires, shootings, missing-persons calls — often becomes slower, more fragmented, and more dependent on the department’s willingness to provide timely information.

In his latest statement, Redfearn argued the shift “is not a step backward in transparency,” describing it instead as a “necessary evolution” aligned with statewide practices. He pointed to a growing list of publicly available resources, including more than a dozen dashboards, a critical-incidents webpage, Flock Safety data, and ongoing community engagement efforts with liaison officers.

Critics argue that dashboards and summaries, by nature, do not replicate the immediacy of police radio, nor do they allow reporters to independently verify information during high-stakes or fast-moving events.

As Boulder joins the growing list of fully encrypted departments, the debate over access is likely to intensify. For police, encryption offers control and reliability. For journalists and transparency advocates, it closes a key window into how policing happens in real time in a city where trust between the community and the department is already strained.

The ones who dared to fight City Hall.

 When Boulder denied public access to police body-cam footage, we took it to court. Our fight for transparency is now before the Colorado Supreme Court — because accountability doesn’t stop at the city line.

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