Baltimore Goes Dark: Police Scanner Encryption Creates New Danger
Police activity in Baltimore will soon be concealed by the shroud of an encrypted radio system. This new equipment will allow officers to work without worrying about whether a crafty criminal is listening to their security tactics. But it poses a security threat to hundreds of thousands of city residents by blinding them to the crimes happening around them.
In the beginning, there was the pandemic, the dark days of loneliness—a time period when Baltimore slowly suffocated beneath a shroud of uncertainty. Its citizens had been asked to hide inside their homes. Its businesses had closed. The fear of the deadly coronavirus circulating through restaurants and stores that once provided food and entertainment to the city’s residents turned Baltimore into a modern-day Pompeii. An unexpected event had caused catastrophic damage and left hundreds of thousands of people in a frozen state of existence—the last moments of their former lives memorialized by their last normal day as human beings roaming the earth with lives, jobs, and a sense of purpose. There were no normal days after that. There were only more days. Then the days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into a year. Eventually, the city’s citizens began to leave their frozen state to explore potential solutions to the pandemic. They wore face masks to ward off the possibility of sharing the virus. They complied with new guidelines, new laws, and new fears tied to the possibility of contracting the virus by touching the wrong door or breathing in the wrong pocket of air. Many of them took a chance on a variety of vaccines, embracing the slim possibility of a life-threatening reaction in exchange for the opportunity to return to their old lives.
In the end, there was encryption, the dark days of information reduction—a time period when Baltimore’s residents were stripped of their ability to see what police officers were doing in their neighborhoods. The police department planned to use a new radio system to shield the communication of its officer. Under encryption, the city’s citizens no longer had to hide inside their homes but, in some ways, could no longer see the world around them. Its businesses would be run by owners who could no longer operate them with some understanding of the type of criminal activity that was occurring in their surrounding environment. The fear of the coronavirus had finally abated, easing the pressure associated with financial insecurity. But in some ways, this new impending phase was worse than the pandemic because with the inception of encryption came a collective realization that the dark days in Baltimore would not end.
Towards the end, it became clear how blind the city’s citizens would eventually become. In that last month, before the scanner went dark, there was a triple shooting in the heart of Fells Point, one of Baltimore’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Fells Point was pressed up against the harbor. Its multitude of restaurants and bars made it a magnet for people who planned friendly gatherings and boozehounds who loved to hop from bar to bar. Its businesses had struggled through the economic recession associated with the pandemic and finally received permission from Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to resume normal operations in mid-May. The shooting occurred in the early hours of June 6, fewer than four weeks after the green light to proceed to normalcy had been given to the state’s business sector. Some of the police officers present in the area when bullets began to fly thought the popping sounds associated with them were the hallmark snap of fireworks.
“It’s just fireworks,” one officer noted.
“I’m not sure about the armed person call but the push that we just had out of here was some fireworks,” another agreed.
Seconds later, one of the highest-ranking officers on duty alerted the others to the shooting. Three men had been shot. They were all transported to a local hospital by 1 a.m. An hour after the shooting, however, police were still struggling to keep the bar crowd at bay. Yellow strips of crime scene tape were strewn everywhere as if a drunken spider had decided to leave a somewhat incomprehensible love note for his female companion: Meet me at Max’s Taphouse. Only no one would be meeting anyone anywhere. Police were pushing the party crowd north and playing whack-a-mole with bar-hoppers who didn’t want to go around the crime scene tape. People were drunkenly stumbling past the shell casings and crime lab technicians who were prepared to protect the evidence at all cost. It was the greatest show on earth.
In the following days, local politicians would pay a heavy price for those theatrics. Business owners desperate for dollars following an economic draught were outraged. Was crime so out of control in the city that people couldn’t partake in the popular weekend pastime of debauchery and committing the occasional sin? What would it take to address this problem? The solution was a widely attended Zoom meeting and a plan to assign additional police officers to patrol the area. It seemed like a great plan—until there was a shooting the following weekend. That’s when some people began to ponder whether there was any real solution at all.
On June 13, multiple gunshots rang out again in the heart of Fells Point. Security camera footage obtained by the Baltimore Sun shows a woman reacting to a sound, realizing that she’s hearing bullets flying out of a gun chamber, and running. Suddenly, everyone around the woman starts running, seeking shelter from an unexpected storm of adrenaline-fueled violence. The barrage of bullets strikes cars and buildings but the intended target or targets escape unscathed. Police initially believed that a person who arrived at one of the local hospitals had possibly sustained injuries from the shooting and had requested a crime lab technician to process the crime scene but that theory proved not to be true. Although a crime lab technician did show up to the sprawling crime scene, his services were unwarranted because no one had been injured during the shooting. Police sent him back to the forensics lab and, after thoroughly searching for dozens of shell casings tucked away in the dark crevices of the street, collected the evidence themselves.
The sun rose over Fells Point long after the crime scene tape had been stripped away. People in posh houses arose from their slumber, unaware of the shooting that had occurred down the street. The Baltimore Police Department did not release a press statement containing details of the event. Why would it? No one had been injured. The department prides itself on keeping the public abreast of critical incidents involving people who had been shot or someone who has been fatally stabbed. Many crimes fall below that critical-incident threshold though and this was one of them. This was property damage. Property damage via stray bullets is incredibly common in Baltimore. It would be ridiculous to expect the police department to update the public every time a would-be criminal didn’t get away with a crime simply because they missed their target and hit a parked car or first-floor window.
During the pandemic, overnight crimes in parts of the city known for attracting tourists or bar crowds had become frequent events. The shootings on June 6 and June 13 were followed by a third shooting in Fells Point on August 10. A 35-year-old man was shot in the leg that night. Days later, on August 12, an armed man pointed a gun at a group of people near the Baltimore Police Department headquarters around 12:30 a.m. One of the nearby officers saw him, chased him, and shot him. Two days after that, on August 14, someone gunned down a 28-year-old man and a 33-year-old man near that headquarters building around 2:50 a.m. After the sun rose, police searched the area where the two men had been shot again and found the shell casings responsible for damaging their bodies in a pool of water leftover from when firefighters had washed away the blood from their injuries. These shootings were a part of an extraordinary trend of violent crimes committed near police in parts of town where there were multiple bystanders who either saw what was happening, didn’t want to see what was happening, or could have gotten hurt.
But that’s the lynch-pin argument against encryption: in the early hours in the morning, when most people are sleeping and most local reporters aren’t working, a variety of events could unfold and, if those events don’t meet a certain threshold, then no one would know about them. It could even happen during the day while local reporters are working.
That was the case on June 14. Police were reacting to pockets of violence throughout the city, subduing flickers of trouble before they became flames that fed chaos. Around 7:10 p.m., they were informed that someone had used a gun to take a white Honda Pilot from a pizza delivery man in the 1800 block of Druid Hill Avenue. The person who committed the carjacking made the grave mistake of stealing a vehicle while the police department’s helicopter, known as Foxtrot, was flying over the city. It wasn’t difficult for Foxtrot to track down the carjacker, who happened to be a sixteen-year-old kid. The Foxtrot crew watched from the air as the teenager ditched the stolen vehicle in the 1000 block of N. Fremont Avenue and it slowly rolled into a parked dump truck. The teenager ran off with a pizza box, tossed the box, pulled off his sweatshirt, and then walked casually because he had greatly underestimated the helicopter’s camera technology. In under a minute, he was running again because the police had caught up with him. Some of the officers chased him on foot. Some of them drove their vehicles. The teenager dodged into an alleyway, ran past a vacant house, and then tried to cut through an empty lot full of overgrown grass and weeds.
He never made it out of that empty lot.
In the aftermath of the police pursuit, the teenager lay disabled amid the long weeds and trash. He had collapsed under the weight of a police car that had run over him with its right two wheels. Days later, people took to social media to decry the excessive use of police force while others said that the young criminal had rightfully suffered the consequences of his actions.
But those people almost didn’t know that the incident had happened.
Police didn’t say anything over the scanner to indicate that a department vehicle had been involved in a pursuit gone terribly wrong. It wasn’t a conspiracy on their part. They were simply responding to events as they unfolded. Afterward, a member of the helicopter crew dropped down to a sub-channel to ask the officer involved in the collision if he was aware that he had run over the teenager.
“I felt like he ran into the vehicle,” the officer said. “That’s when I jumped out.”
“Reviewing our tape it looked like you went over him,” the crew member informed him.
A group of children who had been playing nearby had initially considered themselves lucky to have front-row seats to a police chase. It was the highlight of their hot spring day. But then, as they watched a police vehicle run over a sixteen-year-old kid, their perspective changed. That’s when the consequences of the actions tied to all parties involved extended beyond a teenager who risked being crushed to death for trying to get away with a crime, beyond a police officer who may have miscalculated his trajectory when overzealously trying to capture a carjacker whose age was unknown at the time. The children gathered in the alleyway next to the empty lot, their mouths agape with shock and their faces painted with looks of distress.
“The police hit him,” the littlest one said. He then walked up to the spot where the police were hovering around the collapsed carjacker and put his hand over his heart, patting it against his chest to mimic the rhythm of a heartbeat. It was his way of connecting with the teenager in a town where almost everything is connected in some small way. Afterward, after medics had put the carjacker onto a gurney and rolled him toward a nearby ambulance, the children chased after him. They wanted to see with their own eyes that his injuries weren’t deadly.
There were no news reports on the incident that evening or the next day or the day after that. It was almost as if the police-pursuit-gone-wrong had never even happened. Police kept the incident quiet for four days, despite inquiries made by the local press, and only released video footage of the incident that the helicopter crew had recorded after pictures, audio clips, and drone footage were made public. Again, it would be ridiculous to expect the police department to update the public every time a would-be criminal didn’t get away with a crime. But was it wrong to expect the department to inform the public of an investigation that had been opened because a crime had potentially been committed against a criminal? Even if no one involved was guilty of deliberately hiding the truth, were they innocent of creating the conditions that made the truth concealable? They weren’t when they agreed to encrypt the police scanner channels in one of the most violent and corrupt cities in America.
Baltimore is the birthplace of The Star-Spangled Banner whose lyrics people recite by memory at sporting events with their hands pressed over their hearts. It is the home of immigrants yearning to be free whose various cultures helped create an eclectic and interesting city. It is the land of the Gun Trace Task Force, which terrorized the city’s residents for three years. To some degree, local reporters will still be able to track police activity. The police department said it was prepared to accommodate them. But to some degree, there are problems that will limit the lens of those reporters. There is a time gap at night when most local news organizations cease operating. Cameramen no longer show up at crime scenes. No one is at their desk listening to the scanner. It is in this blind spot where many, many extraordinary events have occurred over the years, spanning from police pursuits to attacks on police.
For instance, on July 24, hundreds of people had gathered near the intersection of Greenmount Avenue and 24th Street to socialize on a warm weekend night. Police had been keeping an eye on a large street party when they noticed a group of people fighting around 11:45 p.m. The fighting eventually escalated into bullets flying through the air.
“It’s only two of us and we have probably 500 people out here right at Greenmount and 24th,” an officer informed his colleagues over the police radio after someone fired off three rounds in the 2400 block of Greenmount Avenue at 11:54 p.m. Several seconds later, someone fired off an additional three rounds in the 500 block of E. 23rd Street, according to data collected by the city’s ShotSpotter gun detection system. During the following two hours, officers had to request backup several times. Cell phone video recorded by a bystander showed an unruly crowd of people confronting a small number of officers on multiple occasions. At one point, an officer had to ask for help removing people who had climbed on top of a patrol vehicle. Eventually, every available officer across the city was redirected to the high-tension street gathering.
The chaos was tantamount to an unsuccessful mini coup. In one of the wealthier neighborhoods, like Fells Point, the confrontation would have attracted the attention of local lawmakers and evoked the uproar of unhappy residents. But in the impoverished neighborhood of East Baltimore Midway, where Ravens rookie kicker Kaare Vedvick was found after he was brutally assaulted in September 2018, his face so badly beaten that first responders initially thought he had been shot, it only attracted additional bits of trash along the street curbs.
To make matters worse, in the months leading up to encryption, the city was stripped of some of its best reporters and editors. This occurred not long after money-eating hedge fund Alden Global Capital took over the company that employed them. In mid-May, after the New York-based hedge fund paid $633 million for Tribune Publishing’s various publications, reporters at the Baltimore Sun and its sister publications were offered the opportunity to take a lump sum of cash and leave. By late June, several Baltimore Sun Media Group employees had taken the buyout offer. Some of them left after working at the newspaper for decades, taking invaluable institutional knowledge with them.
The blind spot that already existed during the overnight hours before encryption would extend into the daylight due to a reduction of resources. After all, a human being is only capable of performing so many tasks. A person is prone to operate under duress when they are asked to ditch the small stuff to focus on another thing or to drop the biggest project in favor of working on smaller projects. Maybe they would have to make hard choices, letting a tip with the potential to have a profound impact fall through the cracks which wouldn’t have otherwise fallen through the cracks. Maybe the hard choices would be made for them.
As business models have shifted, so too has the workload expected of newsroom employees at nearly every media organization. It’s the popular “less is more” mentality of corporate ownership. There are fewer employees and now they will be asked to perform additional tasks. This will save money and allow corporate owners to keep the cushy life to which they have become accustomed; but also, this is how a city dies: quietly, in darkness, with few ears and eyes monitoring its groans and growth, its struggles and strife.
The strip-mining of publications through buyouts has become a common business tactic across America. The gutting of the Baltimore Sun was expected. It cast an ominous shadow over a city that often lurches from one unexpected crisis to the next, from one shocking event to the next. Baltimore operates at a speed that its governing officials are practically powerless to alter. A proactive person can mostly address the city’s problems as they arise; they can rarely prevent them from arising. During the pandemic era, they seemed to arise more quickly. Neighborhoods that had rarely seen violence were noticing new crime trends. For example, in Mid-Town Belvedere, an upscale neighborhood that wrapped around the southern side of the train station and catered to higher-education students, there were few major crimes. That changed in 2021. By late June, the number of shootings in the neighborhood had increased and the number of fatal shootings had doubled when compared to previous years. During that same time, violence had also increased at the crown jewel of Baltimore’s tourist attractions: Inner Harbor. The area surrounding the harbor was home to high-end chain restaurants and dragon-shaped paddle boats. In pre-pandemic times it was packed with visitors and city residents who walked, biked, and jogged around the water. They shopped, rented scooters, and met friends for dinner. By late June, it was the site of three shootings.
During June, some officers were instructed to pick up new radios that would use a coding algorithm to conceal their various communications. A few of them were under the impression that encryption would go into effect on July 1. But the police department wasn’t prepared to move that quickly. The following month, on July 14, Sgt. McKinley Smith sent an email to some of the officers who did not have new radios informing them that the department would begin distributing them on July 19. “The current radio system will switch over to the new encrypted system at a designated time (TBD) all at once,” Smith said. “This means the entire BPD will be switched over at the same time. Due to this, each member will have 2 temporarily during the transition period.”
But months came and went and the designated time did not arrive. Instead, other atrocities did. There were more shootings. There was more violence. Then, on September 10, there was an anomaly. Police had spent two years responding to multiple reports of commercial breaking and entering crimes made by store owners and employees who had been robbed of their ATMs. Initially, the ATM thieves would show up overnight, pry open the door, and remove the machines. Over time, the culture surrounding the get-rich-quick crimes became more fluid, its perpetrators more brazen. In the months leading up to encryption, they begin boldly walking into convenience stores and removing the ATMs in front of store employees and customers, no longer caring who was around to witness their crimes. By late August, they had evolved their craft to include work vans and focused on 7-Eleven stores in Baltimore’s rich neighborhoods. On two separate occasions, they drove vans into those stores. One of them was in the center of Hampden and the other was in the heart of Fells Point. And just as the crime waves that had been crashing against the barriers of human security were starting to inflict unsurmountable damage, the police made an unusual discovery. On September 10, they found eleven gutted and discarded ATMs behind a vacant house in southwest Baltimore. Years of unsolved crimes had laid the bedrock for an ATM mass gravesite.
In the end, after all the chaos, after a specialized unit of police officers committed corrupt crimes so scandalous that they spawned an HBO series, after a deadly pandemic had killed hundreds of Baltimore’s citizens, and after a buyout round gutted its local newspaper, there was encryption. It sat on the horizon like a dark cloud threatening to destroy a village. First, the dark days of information reduction would settle over the city creating a fog of danger so obscure that few people would notice it. Then, it would drown them in uncertainty. Those who resided in the posh neighborhoods would be at liberty to walk around oblivious to all the life-altering events that happened in the poor neighborhoods. They wouldn’t notice the struggle or strife associated with them unless those things somehow had an impact on their personal lives. After all, if there wasn’t a press statement about a crime and if reporters with access to the encrypted scanner were asleep when it occurred, then a large part of the city could move on as if it never happened because, in some ways, it never did. Under encryption, the freedom to live life blind in Baltimore would finally become another conquerable speed bump on the road toward improving the city’s image.
Congratulations. I’m sorry.
Maggie Ybarra is a senior editor at the National Interest.
Images: Maggie Ybarra; Reuters.