STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Mayor Eric Adams spent much of 2023 talking about the need to address New Yorkers’ perception of crime, and there’s no better way to do so than not letting them know when incidents occur.
That’s been the result of new NYPD policy eliminating public access to departmental radio transmissions that went into effect on Staten Island late last week.
Officials, including Adams, have said the new policy is about protecting officers and the public from bad actors using the traditional radio system, but members of the media and those interested in transparency have criticized the new system.
“By encrypting its radio communications, the NYPD is breaking with an almost century-old practice of allowing the press and the public to access information about critical developments in their communities,” New York Civil Liberties Union Senior Privacy and Technology Strategist Daniel Schwarz said. “This latest move to shut out public access to communications and keep New Yorkers in the dark is part of a broader pattern of police secrecy, with the NYPD routinely denying or delaying requests for public records and attempting to shield itself from oversight.”
The NYPD’s latest shield from public scrutiny started last July in certain precincts in Brooklyn and has since spread to other parts of the city, including Staten Island.
An NYPD spokesperson said Friday that Staten Island’s radio zones are being upgraded to digital infrastructure with frequencies encrypted when upgrades are complete.
Throughout his time in office, Adams has shifted between feeding a narrative of a city in disarray, despite low crime numbers, and lamenting the media’s role in fueling public sentiment about an unsafe city.
While the mayor has supported the encryption effort, members of the City Council have held hearings on the matter, but have not taken concrete action challenging the administration’s limits on public scrutiny.
During a November hearing on the topic,…
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