Scanner blackouts are a good thing, if…

Something I found most surprising upon entering the Frontiersman newsroom for the first time was that the scanner here picks up only emergency medical broadcasts. Police communications had long since been scrambled, and apparently no media cabal had managed, as yet, to squirrel together a successful legal challenge to it.

I knew this police secrecy was the way it was in the United Kingdom, but I never would have thought I’d see such a subterfuge of public accountability by law enforcement here in the USA. Americans are, by nature, suspicious of government entities in every form and the police are no exception.

The scanner is a staple of any newsroom, with its nonstop scratches, hisses and beeps, broken up occasionally by reports of crime or accident that make for easy pickings when trying to fill up a newspaper with photo-friendly local content that makes the community feel like a place alive with action, danger, heroism.

I remember one deadline night at a newsroom in Arizona, when a suspect stole items from a retail store attached to a shopping mall and hopped a wall into an adjacent residential area. We listened with rapt attention and amusement as the first officer to respond ran after the assailant, breathlessly reporting back to the dispatcher his coordinates and instructions on where backup should be sent to trap the suspect.

Between placing bets on when, and if, the perp would be caught, we all wondered aloud what an unbelievable advantage the thief would have if he carried with him a portable scanner, the kind our public safety reporter did at all times.

This is the stated reason the city of Anchorage informed the public this week that it would be scrambling signals for its police, and all EMT calls as well, leaving presumably nothing at all to listen to but scratches, wheezes and pops in media newsrooms all over the city.

At this point, I’m probably supposed to toe the media line, predictably wrap myself in the First Amendment and scream bloody outrage over this attempt by the state at trying to sidestep accountability and transparency.

But I don’t think that’s the way I see it.

From a news perspective, scanner-chasing is just about the laziest form of click-bait journalism there is, and furthermore, these days it’s a boon for shut-ins with nothing better to do than listen to the scanner all day and post everything they hear to a Facebook page. These Facebook ‘news sites’ aren’t news sites so much as breeding grounds for spreading bad information, rumors, stereotypes, paranoia and often have a negative effect on public behavior.

I could get behind scanner blackouts coast-to-coast on three conditions: 1) That authorities post to Twitter instantly anytime anything remotely of public import occurs, and 2) That authorities be readily available and cooperative with media members seeking information. 3) That review of scanner recordings be made readily available, and free, to the public.

It’s not uncommon, in communities across the nation, that police and media have an adversarial relationship that sometimes deteriorates into no relationship at all.

In these communities, the media tends to decide the cops are shady or incompetent, and the cops think the media gets things wrong, or worse — is out to make them look bad.

In many of these cases, the scanner becomes the excuse police use for being uncooperative, no doubt annoyed every time reporters show up at a crime scene before they do, doing nothing to help to situation, only serving as yet another thing for them to worry about. It’s seldom that there’s any worthwhile public service the media can provide by being on scene in the moment.

It’s a legitimate gripe police have, but it’s not a legitimate excuse to be obstinate or needlessly secretive when dealing to the media.

If police take the scanner off the table, they’re putting the onus on themselves to make up the difference to ensure the public gets the information it needs in a timely manner.

In my opinion, the argument that police communications are part of the public record as they happen, no longer holds. And if, for reasons of their own safety and better success in catching bad guys, police want their communications to go dark, I’m all for it.

But everywhere they do this, it means they’d better get a whole lot more open and communicative.