BERKELEY — Full public access to police scanner activity in the East Bay will soon be unavailable after Berkeley councilmembers gave the city’s police department permission to encrypt radio communications Tuesday.

The council’s decision reverses a city policy adopted in 2021 that prohibited encryption in most cases. Berkeley Police Chief Jennifer Louis said the change was necessary to align with state and federal privacy requirements, protect officers when on duty and prevent potential suspects from evading arrest.

Having considered alternatives, Louis said switching between encrypted and unencrypted channels would be challenging given a dispatch staffing shortage and delaying the feed or creating a key or workaround for media would not solve the issue of protecting sensitive information

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